


roses bloom (until they rot and fall apart)

by juliettes



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Death, From Sex to Love, Light Angst, M/M, Smut, Sort Of, Strangers to Lovers, Vampires, i mean there are vampires here there will be death, or heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:01:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23066650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliettes/pseuds/juliettes
Summary: do you love me like i love(d) youyesterdaytodaytomorrowforever?
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 11
Kudos: 76





	roses bloom (until they rot and fall apart)

**Author's Note:**

> this is for nat, both nats. i hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> there are mentions of **religion** , so if you're not comfortable with that go ahead and skip this one, i won't mind. the romance here isn't kind, nor is it something that should be aimed for, i am aware. but it's a relationship with many layers. there's sex, though not very graphic at all, and blood, and coffins, and girls that go missing. life isn't kind to them both here. everything dies. nothing lives forever, but still, you'd step out just to see the sky, wouldn't you? 
> 
> i also made a wee playlist for [this](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/29f0Yc6rJET8Nys4cvmofa?si=3U9WOXzJS02ZWyEaG7_rqQ): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/29f0Yc6rJET8Nys4cvmofa?si=IDroMY5xTiKJ-rFy8re2Cg

paris sinks into a gloom on the thirty-second of october. the night is darkest before dawn in the small hours belonging to no one, darker than it is light, and then darker still. business is slow. two stores down, business is thriving. fluorescents light up the aisles devoid of goods as eliott glances up from his phone, chip packets and chocolate bars scarce, toilet paper and ballpoint pens even scarcer. it's warm inside, from the vents letting out warm air through refrigerators filled with beverages no one drinks, humming. outside, a tasteless neon sign reading _open_ flickers like a faulty rainbow, casting an eerie shade of crimson after dark. it's a dirty place — regulations will probably shut it down soon, eliott reckons. inside reflects the outside, the city matching its selfsame ugliness. it is a combination that doesn't necessarily please him, but for the few euros it pays, it's something he can bear. 

then the bell above the door emits a cheery tinkle.

"hello?" a voice cuts through the silence, doubtlessly boyish, desperation tainting the question tapering off it. eliott doesn't reply. the door behind him closes softly, bringing in cool october air the scent of dirt (copper, too, maybe) (or maybe it's just the establishment two doors down). 

business is slow, but when it isn't, it's strange, uncanny, even, and eliott finally stands with a sigh, thumb resting on the white button beneath the counter. it might possibly be faulty as most things in here are. it wouldn't be nice bleeding out on the grimy floors, eliott thinks briefly — _too dirty_. "can i help you?" he finally replies. 

whatever eliott expected the person to be, it is the opposite, not the boy standing in front of him, hands in his leathery pockets, all dark and gray tones dissolving into the shop around them. he looks ill and dirty; pale, pale enough his eyes appear sunken in, dirt under his fingernails, a black sweater hanging off a viciously narrow frame. the stare eliott feels buries itself under his skin, curiosity staining the boy's pupils too blatantly. it scares him a little, but clearly not enough for eliott to repeat, "can i help you?"

it seems to shake him awake. the boy standing in front of him blinks, as if just remembering that he should. for a moment eliott imagines him embarrassed, blushing, probably, except he isn't. no pink spreads across his cheeks. the whites of his eyes an unnatural shade of sterile. 

he's pretty despite it all, or pretty because of it. 

"i— i'm lost," he sighs almost gravely to the floor as eliott's thumb comes away from the button. an elbow on the checkout beckons him closer, and for a moment it crosses eliott's mind that he's afraid to do so. taking small steps, sniffing lightly at the air, jaw locked tight. the boy, with his dirty, pretty face and his dirty, ugly clothes, stands a metre away from him, mouth parting, and eliott can see the way his teeth seem to scrape the inside of his bottom lip. "i need to eat." 

"ah."

"st. joseph's—," he walks closer and closer, seemingly involuntarily, hungrily, until all that separates them is an old plastic counter. eliott watches him look up, too fascinated to move, the possibility of death not scaring him enough to notice the blue of his eyes ringed scarlet. " _please_ ," the boy whispers from under his breath. "take me there." eliott's mouth thins.

_vampires_. they weren't uncommon, but eliott had never encountered one before. it was a somewhat tolerant cohabitation between the living and the undead; while his sun was their moon, their moon was his sun — none interfered. blood was kept in the blood bank, in plastic packets labelled eight different kinds (a-positive, he's done it before), in refrigerators, and money was given in exchange for it. the unemployed, poor, hungry, they were the people who usually lined the halls of the centre. then there are folks like him — vampires — undying, frozen in time who rely on them for sustenance. nobody was born rotten, not like this. they were turned, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not; they were the crimes committed in a night that does not abide the day, and in turn news of them were rare. 

"my shift doesn't end until late." it's not entirely true. he could close the store now, it wouldn't change the feeble stack of bills inside the cash register whether he did or not. maybe this is it. his body is twenty-two, skinny and sharp, and the graveyards are expensive, so therefore he will most likely be cremated in a cheap wooden coffin, scattered in the wind, nameless, almost, falling into the fissures of history to be remembered. a forty-eight hour tragedy on the front page of le monde until the next. another body to add to somebody else's repository of hatred. this isn't how eliott imagined he would die, but he isn't sure he minds either. in the corner of his vision, the boy is still very much there, albeit fading faster by the second. 

"i'll pay you," he croaks, nails digging into the thin skin of his wrist. he slumps forward and eliott's arms shoot out to steady him. this close, eliott watches his adam's apple work as he inhales deeply, leaning into his touch, all cold as a corpse; in minutes the shutters of the convenience store rattle shut. 

inside, the blood bank reeks of ether and death. some people are dressed in the colors of heavy religion, holding onto objects (an inverted cross, rosary between their fingers) with mouths shaped in low prayer, gaunt as they are. others in leather jackets, holey shirts, pink barrettes in dyed hair. three a.m. strikes on the wall beside the crucifix while eliott is sat on a plastic chair. lucas ( _lucas lallemant, twenty_ ) is in a separate room. eliott shuffles the papers lucas filled out in his hands, the machines still operating bathing the dark with a greenish glow. it's busy yet eerily silent. when lucas comes out from a door, the statue of saint joseph, with his kind, porcelain face, seems to twist, and so do the people who shrink away, but lucas simply takes them in with his empty eyes. there are bloodstains on his shirt. it's on the corner of his mouth, too, blood a shade darker than his lips. then he faces him, face blank, less smudgy-looking than an hour ago. 

his eyes no longer have scarlet in them, eliott notices. now they're just blue. _cornflower blue_ , vermeer's favorite, ocean blue, the blue of blamelessness. "let's go." eliott nods and stands, surprised by the false sort of familiarity his tone carried. "i said i'd pay you," lucas tells him as soon as they're out the door. a plastic grocery bag swings from his wrist, crinkling as it hits his thigh. 

"you remember?"

a raised brow. he seems to shift on his weight, suddenly uncomfortable, drawing in long breaths he doesn't need. lucas looks at him, then, and his voice is soft when he speaks. "what's your name?" he bluntly ignores the previous question, almost falling into step with him. eliott looks back at the boy, putting space between for some reason. in that moment, oddly enough, there was a kind of intimacy eliott hadn't felt in a while — hollow acceptance, maybe. 

"i'm eliott. you're lucas— i saw on the form you filled out."

"vaguely," lucas eventually replies. it wasn't the response he was expecting, staring at the angular edges of his face. last tuesday was the last time eliott conversed with someone for more than three phrases, and the novelty of this feeling bothers him — not many people care for a boy who was just a shadow. "it's not like i'm an amnesiac. are we even going the same way?"

at the words, eliott glances up. the neighbourhood is still dark, moon hanging low enough in the sky to illuminate the crooked path where streetlamps don't touch. some shops are still open, its colored brights spilling through the façade onto their converse shoes, fuschia and blue and green and purple, before shadows swallow it back into all the sullen shades of black. "i live around here," eliott lies, voice too loud in the padded silence, shivering when the wind blows a little harsher. lucas snorts. there's a bus stop not far from here, night service, home a twenty minute ride away into the shadier parts of the city. this late — or this early, even the corrupted lay in silent slumber.

"right." he doesn't stop, grocery bag full of blood bags swinging from his wrist, and eliott is pointlessly intrigued. suddenly, lucas comments, "you're not afraid of me." _you're not afraid of death_. 

a pause. "am i supposed to be?"

lucas shrugs, sneakers kicking up loose gravel as they approach the end of the path. buildings loom, their sharp edges drawing long shadows over them. "i can't smell it on you," lucas mutters. it makes eliott mildly embarrassed, knowing he could probably smell the grease in his hair, the dirt on his body, the unwashed shirt, the fear that isn't there. the papers he's still clutching wrinkles in his hands. they're taken from him with cold hands that barely brush his and tucked away with all those blood bags. "not many people aren't, i wouldn't be surprised." there's bitterness in those inflections, eliott notices.

"i'm not like most people." lucas scoffs, eliott close enough to see him rolling his eyes. derisive, he carries on, almost smiling, "i'm different."

"you're _strange_."

"you're jealous."

in the hungry dark, maybe, possibly, lucas' teeth appear sharper, his mocking laughter a symphonic poem to the screaming of the crows as they rouse, before growing quiet again. "maybe i am," he says, simply. he looks bothered, and eliott wonders if he's the reason behind it. there is still blood on the corner of his mouth, blood on his shirt.

"ah," is all eliott breathes, not knowing what else to say. 

lucas slows down to walk with him, and they — eliott, mainly — walks slowly, aimlessly, feet carrying him somewhere. somewhere in the direction lucas needs to be, he guesses. they walk together, as close as together can be for two strangers, until an intersection comes into view. vehicles passing by slash bands of light across their clothes in stripes. lucas is first to stop. 

"it's a cross," he points out with childish scorn, glancing sideways. eliott stands beside a traffic light blinking red, red, red, and for a moment lucas is smeared in all the shades of red that aren't supposed to be there. he blinks, and it disappears. "— and this is where i leave."

the light turns green. urgent clicks vibrate throughout the chilly october air, cutting silence as more shadows begin to slink away, leaving a bruised sky lucas stands against and a ten euro note placed loose in his fingers. it doesn't belong to him. "this isn't mine," eliott starts, pinching it gingerly to give back, but by then lucas is skipping the lines on the crossing and green turns into red again. 

he doesn't look back. not even once.

a van rattles past, and the noise reverbs against the buildings before getting absorbed. it's quiet like the apocalypse. red turns into green, and eliott crosses as nighttime turns into a murky shade of dawn, october into november, ten euros richer and a newfound curiosity lurking under the damaged parts of his skin. 

night service no longer operates, all the veins buses crawl through exhausted as eliott walks and walks, feet dragging, until he's barely even walking anymore. the apartment he lives in is a shoebox. his hands are cold, rubbing his eyes, vision still an eerie film of red. he might be seeing things. eliott finally crawls into bed, even though he doesn't feel tired. in fact he's never felt more awake, but under his dirty clothes, under the skin stretching over lanky bones, the heartbeat rattling his chest and echoing around the walls takes him to sleep. under his eyelids there isn't much. an outline of the boy, perhaps, because that's all that his mind seems to remember. deeper and deeper into sleep he gets, though, all that his bruised memory sees is the blood staining the corner of a boy's mouth, his shirt.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


in a house on a hill, like the rotten boy living inside of it, it was rotted from the outside in. 

vines, intertwined and choking one another, grew on the walls of the house, poorly maintained and covering the prettier parts of the insides. none could see this — or bothered to, really. walking deeper, one might grow afraid of the darkness it held within. walking deeper still, it was always quiet, abandonment apparent but not neglect, no, not at all. it was loved. plants grew in pots. those that didn't need sunlight, of course, like the rotten boy living inside of here. _dieffenbachia_. full of poison. if touched, it was easy to get hurt. 

if touched, you may never want to touch again. 

the more intricate parts of the house were left untouched layered twelve summers he didn't see. like time has stopped between one breath and the next. unlike his heart that doesn't beat, the floor has a slow and steady rhythm, creaking comforting when he has a body of a corpse, silent, inaudible. everything is cold. an eternal winter to keep anything from decaying any further. 

lucas puts the blood next to the fruit — fresh, after he tossed the rotten ones out — in a fridge with an uncorked bottle of wine amongst others. open and untouched. milk has spoilt. he keeps in it there, and as the sun rises higher and higher, the rotten boy in this deceptively rotten house on the opposite side of town, sinks deeper and deeper into sleep.

  
  
  
  
  


eliott walks on the roof of death while asleep. he's slept with the lights on, and the pallid colors hurts his eyes when he wakes. nightmares cling onto his mind like a lover, intimate and invasive before they dissipate, hearing the ten euro bill crinkle in his pocket as he rolls over. the glass of stale water on his bedside table is emptied within seconds. red numbers stare back at him. red numbers, like the ones in the blood bank, climbing higher and higher until they match the same one on his ticket ( _€_ _100 has been deposited into your account_ ) (that number climbs higher, too, after blood has been drained). traffic drifts in through the gap between his window though he lives facing the back streets, the sun high up in the sky. sigh, before stacking the empty glass over the note. 

from the bed to his bathroom it takes less than three steps, and the reflection in the mirror staring back at him hasn't changed. the lanky sort of eyelids, messy box-dyed hair. perpetually ill-looking. it's not a reflection he necessarily wants to change, not something he necessarily minds. the bleached pieces of hair are starting to fade, leaving odd streaks running throughout, dry-looking and unkempt. eliott sighs. the dirty mirror fogs with his breath. inhaling, the scent of damp hasn't faded from the night before, mixing with the everlasting garbage drifting through the window that can't shut, entirely unpleasant. the holey jeans and t-shirt are removed, and eliott stands under the spray of the shower, waiting for it to get warm. 

in less than ten minutes he's out, water dripping from his hair, something bothering his throat. it might be a cold. eliott stands alone in his room, feeling the silence as if it were tangible, weighty as he skims his finger through the air to test the reality of it all. the afternoon light renders the corners of the apartment where messes are visible beside the peeling wallpaper, a window tangled with spider webs spun in feverish intricacy, like the same laces of light cast from the same sun onto his bedsheets. unlike the forlorn shadows nesting inside eliott's bones, waiting to be tended to. airy, open, sparse. furniture was kept to the singular noun. plurals were a privilege he couldn't afford.

eliott's shirt sticks to his damp skin as he plucks his keys off the bedside table, flapping slightly at the movement. it takes several flights of stairs to reach a rusty door. underneath his fingertips, the paint chips and crumbles into dust. with a gentle shove the broken lock slides forgivingly to give way to a rooftop devoid of people, just muffled noise and odiferous air, cold and bright. 

november first. winter is closing in, rain making everything glimmer in a city that has lost its glamour. eliott hasn't always lived here. this noisy, ancient place, all gray under the weight of autumn, gray as ever, gray as the skin stretched over joints. to some it is rarely gray, the colors everchanging, shifting in the brilliance of a kaleidoscope. these hues spun in his pupils before, then turned white. then eventually white into gray. 

he coughs, and at once the sound is absorbed. 

minutes pass, maybe an hour, maybe more, before eliott's stomach complains. the slate blue of the skyline has dwindled by the time he's back inside the apartment, sipping on lukewarm coffee from yesterday and snacking on crackers as he fiddles restlessly with his phone. decaf. the normal kind doesn't mix well with his brain. his thoughts go astray — to a boy that might be a man with the eternal body of a boy, with a soul that might be old as time itself though eliott has doubts about it. (does he have a soul?). he seems young, as young as the body he carelessly carries around. he seems reckless. _young_. probably eliott's own age, or possibly even younger. 

a notification lights up eliott's phone. he pushes the pills down his throat with the last bits of coffee at the bottom of his mug. everything is shaded blue outside; eliott locks the door behind him. 

  
  
  
  
  


"you're on time."

"always," because he never is. minutes have a habit of slipping by without notice. 

idriss watches him from behind the counter of the register, smiling, and eliott smiles back. he can feel the way it's dark and thin on his mouth. son of the owner, brother to a sister eliott knows little about, friend to a shadow, idriss offers the key, the kindness, then a touch on his shoulder matching the words. _if anything goes wrong, call me_. outside, glass shatters on the pavement somewhere far away. paris isn't safe. nothing is. 

a nod. "sure." he won't.

"if anything goes right, call me, too." idriss' expression is friendly, features drawn somewhat elegantly despite the sallow fluorescents. sometimes kindness, to eliott, is met with a collateral in the transaction of a debt that can't be paid, but with him this isn't the case (it must be the same with him, too — _lucas_ ). the cool metal of the key cuts into his palm. freshly minted, after he lost the other one, and the one before that, and the one before—

a grin. "sure." he won't. 

he watches him stall a bit before departing with one final smile under the shifting sky, now mottled purple and pink and blue and red, reflecting the neons as they turn on, welcoming the night that wakes as another one sleeps. while one dreams, the other sinks into reality. 

people come out. they stand under the roof of death and eliott often watches them pass him by through the dirty window with unabashed curiosity. so careless now that death has shared his home, walking side by side with humanity. 

as usual, no one comes in, but eliott busies himself with taking stock, jotting it down, mopping the floor, restocking, people-watching, sipping cheap coffee from an old machine in the back, thinking about nothing. eventually a girl comes in, very human-looking. she buys a packet of crisps and cheap beer, and eliott calculates how much it costs in his head before she's in front of him, and then she's gone, leaving only the scent of sickly sweet perfume in the air and the warm coins slid over. she smells like candy and looks as if she probably has a name like _daphné_. even-voweled and pretty. he pockets the change the girl didn't stick around long enough for. 

then he thinks of the boy, who's not really a boy, who instead wears the shape of one and how he looked afraid. thinking about nothing turns into something. a deepening curiosity devouring him entirely, eating him whole as he stares out into a night that can only deepen. no one else comes in the next hour. the people who walk by only seem to go in one direction — down. the people who walk by come back up in the opposite direction not long after, looking like they've got color in their cheeks, although eliott isn't sure if it's just the light that hits them at certain angles. 

they're fascinating. the very opposite of human. closer to the dead but not close enough, touching life but not touching enough. a relic of a past that carries them into the future, and sometimes, sometimes, eliott wonders what it's like to be a part of something bigger than himself. he scans his eyes across the shelves, counting them idly and runs his fingers along the plastic labels, the material smooth under his fingertips. 

nothing much happens until the end of his shift, the late night convenience store made into a ghost town the size of a box. the darkness hasn't faltered even when the shutters in front of the store come down, so eliott takes a walk, cold hot dog in one hand and his lighter in the other. there are eyes that follow him, curious ones, matching his own when he looks back. two stores, and the foul scent of the hospital's hallways wraps around eliott's throat. it makes him sick. people trickle in and out. he peers in, and it's the same scene as the day before: the greenish glow of machines after dark, christ worn on pieces of clothing, the statues that stare with their sorrowing gazes, blood bags and paperwork. idle waiting and sirens. 

eliott doesn't go inside. he stands outside, blankly, looking in. some look back out. a church stands hyperbolically next to it, as does a graveyard. looking at it there is a strange sort of irony, eliott thinks — a terrible beauty, holy and the unholy, each sharpening the other. he had trouble understanding it. 

eliott goes inside the church, however. the doors are heavy and so is the air. claustrophobic with incense, thicker than the stench from the hospital's hallways, its arches reaching heavens, vaguely illuminated by moonlight coming through the shards of stained glass, fabric falling in ripples. candles burned on the altar. the pews mostly empty, save for a few restless souls. 

together it sang with ceremony eliott had never done, a belief he didn't entirely believe — dense with a faith that cannot be shaken, threaded with the history that thrummed beneath wood and ceramic, eternal, unwavering, final and judgemental. he slides into a pew, pushing aside a bible. a few moments later, almost imperceptibly, someone slides next to him. eliott doesn't turn; the bible gets pushed further away. a candle goes out, and the smoke drifts up, meeting the pregnant dark. 

"i think god hates me."

here, the words are obscene, profane, even. lucas looks over at him, and eliott can see the way a cross presses against the fabric of his shirt, silver chain around his neck, and it looks as if it might hurt him, burn him, suffocate him. his eyes are wide and unblinking, fangs tugging at his lip, a sweetness in his stare. "why?" he asks. lucas leans back against the pews and shuts his eyes, and eliott follows. there are shapes underneath his eyelids, eliott sees, maybe it's god, maybe it's not. probably not— _god is going to cut you down_. 

  
  


( _god is going to cut you down._ it's not the name of the song, a song, that song, dirty and mournful and condemning, for sinners not for saints, liars and thieves and fornicators. for those who dream in the dark. _i dream in the dark_ , eliott hears, he hears it through his mind like an orchestra, performed like a symphony. i dream in the dark, in the dark, in the dark, until it turns light.)

  
  


( _god is going to cut you down_ . it's not the name of the song, a song, that song, unstained and joyful and veridical, for sinners not for saints, liars and thieves and fornicators. for those who dream in the light. _i dream in the light_ , lucas hears, he hears it through his mind like a choir, sung like a hymn. i dream in the light, in the light, in the light, until it turns dark.)

  
  


he's on his knees in this dream where he is awake, albeit in this dream he isn't in a dream. all the hues of the church return when eliott opens his eyes, and lucas is staring at him, an oddness swallowed inside his pupils. looking at him is like looking into an abyss, and having it look back at you. lucas doesn't look away, though. he stands, still staring, until he turns to leave.

— and, like a fool, eliott leaves with him. 

it becomes the same as last night, where they walk together, but this time through the revered silence of the spaces between graves. lucas' arms swing about, almost hitting him. he carries himself like he carries his body, careless in a way that eliott can't quite explain. the sound of grass crunching under their shoes break the estranged silence until they hit the pavement. it grows eerily quiet. he's got ripped jeans on, despite the biting breeze. a hoodie, same as last night (strangely the same), is wrapped flimsily around his body, black, doing nothing against the bitter autumn. then, comes his voice. "are you trying to take me home, eliott?" the words are tossed into the air. the question startles him completely. the boy waits patiently for a response, eyebrows raised. a smile is almost there behind the unrepentant expression. "i'd be expensive."

"how much?" eliott asks, and it takes him by surprise the same way it seems to take lucas', glancing over at him. "if i wanted to take you home."

such a hypothetical would be impossible in every circumstance. this time lucas turns completely, attention fully on him, surprising eliott again. that face, in this light, magnifies the youthful sort of beauty he has— unhindered by the bleak hues of his skin, full lips having lost all its color. it feels like lust built by attraction, perhaps, a longing to feel some body flush against his. it looks like it might hurt. falling for him, that is, a hurt that hurts somewhere near the centre of his body. "for you?" and then the surprise is hidden at once, body turned back away from him, hands touching the seams of his old jeans. eliott watches his eyes find his, how amused they seem. "more than you can afford, i think. i'm expensive."

_he looks expensive_ . it's a shameful thought, full of dirtiness layered between the spaces of his mind. but the shame grows further when his mind slips into counting the money he has and the money he doesn't have. they don't talk for a while. eliott doesn't really know where he's going, feet taking him to where lucas needs to be. they walk for a while longer. lucas doesn't attempt to make conversation, he also doesn't tell him to leave, so eliott sticks around until he slows down in front of an ivy-covered gate. it's crooked all over, the broken porch looking as if it might cave in on itself, house like it belongs to dusty ghosts. eliott shifts on his weight, feet hurting. lucas doesn't invite him in. _you didn't pay me_. he shakes his head briskly, waving him off with a bleeding heart, a crude smile tugging his lips up. nevertheless, eliott smiles back. 

the smile feels real, despite how contrived their interactions have been. it's a sick longing that eats him up from the inside out. even sicker, as eliott realises he wants to be invited in. 

walking back, eliott's slightly lost in between the winding streets, but he ends up in a damaged liquor store. a few bottles of beer are bought, only one is opened. he looks at the other ones in his bag and wonders faintly if lucas would enjoy them — if he could, before quickly erasing the thought. the bottle breaks loudly when he tosses it into the trash, glass glinting in the soft daylight as the sun begins to drip into the cracks of this side of the world. 

eliott feels weirdly like he's bled. there are no stains anywhere under the insipid bulb of his apartment building. 

that night, sleep takes him under fast. 

but that night, when he sleeps, he doesn't dream. 

  
  
  
  


days and nights pass drowsily, filled with vaguely familiar faces and foreign company, work and the hours where the tv drones on, familiar yet foreign. there's an open space behind the convenience store where eliott often smokes. litter drowns the ashy ground, mostly cigarette butts or the last bits of joints eliott doesn't get to smoke. when business is slow, slower than it usually is, and the idleness starts to feel like imprisonment, he goes outside. working night shift in a convenience store is an ugly profession. then again, neither is not getting paid. 

unlike the previous instances, eliott doesn't go searching. he takes the night service straight home, sleeps at a reasonable hour, and when he sleeps — he dreams. lucas doesn't find him in the same way eliott doesn't. while it isn't open avoidance, eliott chooses to walk the path he usually walks, the one without the convoluted questions attached to it. 

the grocery store is a fifteen minute walk away through the messy parts of paris. crime bleeds into the narrow arteries even in stark sunlight, inevitably. it's muscle memory, eliott reckons, tired body knowing the way forward before anything else does. it's cold out, to the point steam comes out when he breathes. traffic is distant, mingling with groundless screams, sound carried forward only by the wind. 

a basket hangs limply on eliott's wrist while he's reading the labels of canned food. his eyes focus in on the price tags. "that one's cheaper." a finger points to one tag in particular. _bony_ . angles protrude from the awkward points of boyish knuckles, and they're pale, translucent, almost. lucas isn't looking at him. "it tastes like shit, though." eliott breathes out, muttering a quiet _oh._ leaning forward, lucas examines the cans of soup closer, empty basket hanging from his wrist, too, wearing a different hoodie, same color. their eyes meet, briefly, before moving on. "i haven't tasted in a long time, though," he adds. "but the last time i had it, it was disgusting."

"ah."

he picks the more expensive one, and the cans roll around in his basket. without meaning to, eliott stares at lucas' empty one, and the questions hover in his mouth but don't come out. it's rude, apparently. lucas doesn't seem like he'd mind. "you eat?"

the boy looks about him, then shrugs, revealing a complicated expression — face blank, jaw tight, dark eyebrows drawn in the slightest. a heater moans weakly. "i don't know," the answer comes after a minute, voice soft, already walking away. "maybe."

the same can is dropped inside lucas' basket, just one, nothing else. eliott follows him to the dairy section; he buys milk, cheese. eliott buys nothing else. they don't speak, silence spilling with the lament of a song that's been stuck on repeat in the grocery store for the last ten years. it's in english ( it goes something like _i'm in too deep, you're the fix i've come to need_ , and it chases him all the way home ), hollow-tuned and empty sounding — disturbing, maybe. lucas seems to know the words, he mouths them while he's going through the sleepy aisles, absentmindedly, fingers dragging along the steel racks. his basket fills quickly; eliott's remains somewhat empty, still, and eliott muses on which one of them is the living one. 

"i haven't seen you in a while."

"busy," lucas shrugs, curt payment, and the cashier doesn't ask any further. she finishes ringing them up. "you walking me home again, eliott?" he asks wryly while they're outside, standing idle in the shade, away from the midday sun. eliott coughs out a humorless laugh as he puts out his cigarette. smoke spills out into the grayness they stand around.

"how much?" eliott finds himself asking. 

it's the same answer. _more than you can afford_. the canvas bag leaves marks on the skin of his wrist, white ones, blushing, maybe, little blood rushing to the surface. eliott sits with his back against the wall, the concrete cold against his jeans. his groceries are in a bag on his lap, phone vibrating as game notifications light it up every few moments. "i have drinks," the suggestion is quiet. there's no diffidence to his syllables, no shame, nothing that offers weakness. eliott watches him say this. he holds a cheap-looking bottle of wine. "you can go if you want."

daylight still burns the asphalt several metres away from them. high noon, maybe, the sun as high as high can be. it's not good to go around drinking with strangers in broad daylight — it isn't sensible. common sense suggests that it isn't. _strangers_ , eliott thinks with a note of virulent reluctance. that's what they are, not friends, barely acquaintances. "you can go if you want," eliott repeats it back to him. nothing seems to betray how lucas is feeling, except in the way he holds himself, fingers tightening around the neck of the bottle. _the same fingers that could wrap around my neck_ , eliott observes morbidly. his eyes follow the lines under his clothes when he sits beside him with the bottle in hand. they're clean, entirely so from his clothes to his pants. the cap twists open easily under lucas' grip. eliott looks away from him and to the bottle. 

"i don't want to go."

usually, eliott isn't one to read in between the breaths between vowels, not often. but attraction inflates illusions until plain truths are twisted into unplain ones. he needs to stop thinking. lucas offers him the bottle. eliott can smell it from here, the wine, stale and earthy and cheap, and eliott is too aware of how close they sit. "thanks," he mutters, careful to avoid lucas' fingers. it tastes how it smells. eliott makes a face and lucas laughs, laughs, and there's a certain charm to it, as if it is a sound that doesn't belong. he takes a sip again, because his face will scrunch up, because lucas has a charming laugh. "you should try," eliott puts it in front of him.

"i wish," he sighs. nonetheless a pale hand takes it, and lucas peers into the bottle, sniffing the dark liquid, tipping a few drops out onto the concrete. redness stains the floor like blood. the vision is fascinating. 

"it tastes like shit, anyway." pointless words, flimsy comfort. he hums. once in a while, the doors to the supermarket open, warm air cutting through the frigid cold of the outside. it takes a while for the wine to soak into the concrete, bottle sat in front of them, untouched, left unconsumed, uncapped. what a waste. 

"can i walk you home?" lucas asks, then, chin perched on his knees, arms wrapping around his legs like a young boy. 

he stops breathing altogether. 

the question, so bluntly posed, makes eliott blush, devoid of any unsure undertones. 

"yeah," eliott nods. "sure— if you want."

they get up, together. lucas closes the red wine; four blocks away, he chucks it out into the trash. eliott takes the meandering path back, lucas hums the song that resonated inside the store, walking under store awnings and the skeleton of trees, voice as charming as his laugh. as charming as the strange pattern of his sentences and its odd rhythms. he doesn't know why he does such a thing. sometimes eliott will look over his shoulder, and lucas' eyes would lift — and then he'd look away first, always first. but he arrives home too soon. 

standing by the gate, when lucas meet his gaze, eliott's doesn't fall away. it's a silent invitation, a chance to go. everything looks different under the midday hues, his apartment, too. the building is a bland yellow, paint cracking everywhere as they climb the steps to eliott's place, breathing in the dampness clung to the walls. at some point lucas grabs onto the hem of his jacket, suddenly bold. it's a light hold, the kind of hold you can barely even feel. 

the curtains were left shut inside the flat. lucas takes off his shoes by the door, leaving it next to his bag of groceries. the mess makes the apartment look smaller, clothes everywhere. eliott lets his groceries (cans of food, white bread, two bottles of beer) slump over the improvised coffee table. the tap in the kitchen drips, drips, drips, until eliott can no longer hear it drip. lucas shuffles around, touching everything. it's become habitual to stumble into the ceiling, a slanted thing over his bed, sheets wrinkled, bed unmade. the bathroom is an unwelcoming green tucked in the very corner, sticking out amid the pale shades. lucas doesn't make that mistake. eliott feels shame if that's what it's called. what he has and what he doesn't have — it's all here. "it isn't much," he apologises softly, as lucas sits on the bed. 

"i'm used to it. i like it better this way," lucas answers, shrugging. "it's dark in here." he lies on the mattress, and it creaks under his weight. there's a small sliver of soft skin eliott can see by the light of a tungsten. it is dark, the lightbulbs missing or dimming, but it suits lucas, as it suits eliott. he likes it dark. shadows are a companion, lurking in the corners, staying there. then lucas pats the empty space next to him, sitting up slowly, hair a mess from the wind outside, watching him back. "— you should sit, it's your place."

again, the mattress complains when eliott sits, their knees touching, arms, elbows, shoulders, ankles, bed made for one. the openness startles him. lucas looks like he wants something, the want too obvious, as is the sharp sting of affection eliott has for him. "what do you want?" eliott asks, then. for a moment there's only the dripping of the tap and the whir of the fridge before lucas shifts. he shrugs off his jacket, and it pools on the flooring between them.

"i want to kiss you."

none of them say anything else after that. eliott feels the air expel from his lungs, misplaced. lucas touches him on the elbow, fingers sliding around the crook of his elbow to turn him his way, neither rough nor gentle. it isn't love, eliott reckons. too soon, it's too soon, but— "i won't bite if you kiss me." 

some centimetres separating them has lucas looking up, and it's an odd angle, though appealling nonetheless. his heart fails. this close, eliott sees the cross at his throat, all silver and rust. eliott spares a huff of a laugh. "okay," he nods. lucas shivers, leaning forward, cheek cold under his touch, and eliott has to inhale. he's never kissed an undead before. he has to inhale, greedy, and lucas smells like honey and poison, like the ether lingering in the hospital. lucas leans forward again, their noses touching. but eliott is the one to kiss him, and he tastes like metal and copper, like they shared the same wine underlying his tongue. there's desperation in the kiss, slow, a blistering kind of heat spreading through his body. lucas undresses himself, clumsily so, his sweater then his jeans, revealing acute angles matching his personality. "— slow down," he mutters into the kiss, but there's urgency in the way he's pushing lucas clothes away. 

then lucas starts removing eliott's shirt and jeans, hands all over him, kissing along his jawline. he rubs the sharp edges of lucas' hips, unsure if it's too intimate. he wants to ask, but he holds to the words in. all he can see in the darkness are the contours of his body. lucas slides to his knees, tracing over the ribs, pressing a kiss where one's lungs are supposed to end. a noise escapes his mouth. the boy below him almost preens, but eliott hauls him up, nibbling down his neck and it's — soft, intimate, and lucas swallows, gasping when eliott has his mouth on a particular patch of skin. there's no feelings involved. just the vaporous kind of attraction, the kind of attraction you can fuck out. _you can touch me_ , lucas mutters, so eliott does. he touches and lucas rubs and they sigh and it's fast. quiet, lips bitten, marks barely left behind. he somehow wants to kiss him while they fuck, but lucas has his face turned away, panting. nothing sweet is said. lucas unravels first, nails biting into his arm. it's a good sort of pain, one that makes the chase closer, lucas' breath cold over him, one that forces him to say broken things. it ends, after a while, the smell of sex staining the room, heat lost. he lies next to him. "do you—," eliott's about to reach out to touch the ends of his hair, but stops. 

lucas looks mildly confused by the gesture. "yes?" a rasp still clings onto his vowels. eliott shakes his head, _don't worry_. neither of them seem to like questions. they lay there for a while, daylight fading in spots the heavy curtains don't cover. "i need to go," and lucas stands, pulling his clothes back over himself, angles disappearing under them.

"i'm sorry," he finds himself saying. eliott tugs on his boxers at the edge of the mattress, gingerly, heavily embarrassed. _i don't usually do this_ , he wants to say _._ "it's been a while."

"it was good," lucas says, back turned away from him. his shoes are already on his feet, clothes like they've never been removed. he looks over his shoulder. "thanks for the company." it's strange, the pleasantries, how unnatural this all seems, because it is. he sits up, fully now, and lucas' eyes fall on a spot by his neck before he yanks a shirt over his head, too. 

"do you need the bathroom?"

"ah." lucas nods, pushing his hair flat. his converse shoes leave dirt on the floor when he approaches eliott with uncertain steps. eliott watches him. on his toes, lucas kisses him on the corner of his mouth, closing his eyes. he doesn't turn his head. "see you around, eliott." the bathroom door screeches shut. his ribcage fills with a hurricane of feelings, a thousand of them, each one corrupt, maybe. it robs the air out of his lungs. then lucas comes out while eliott is distracting himself with changing the sheets, and leaves. 

by the time he goes to the laundromat, he's still sore. a reminder, the only one. the coins fall into the slot, melodically, but it echoes harsh in the solitude of the room around him. he puts the soiled sheets into the wash. the steel rim of the machine catches his reflection as he shuts the door. it's a harrowing sight. eliott sighs, touching the bruise left under his collarbone. _another reminder_. the washing machine gurgles, drowning the fabric in cool, clear water, rinsing the stains away, leaving another scent in its place. 

  
  
  
  
  


( _i'm sorry eliott_ , idriss is saying, his voice crackling over the phone, and eliott is at a record store two weeks later, and his hand halts, hovering over johnny cash. _we're closing, the rent is too expensive. we can't afford it. i'm sorry, eliott, i'm sorry. i know you need the money_.)

  
  
  
  
  


the plastic seats under him are uncomfortable. with every breath his lungs expand, filling with the slight sting of bleach. a radiator sitting beside the magazine rack barely appeases the chill, its hum joining the lyrical _beep_ of an orchestra of machines at work, keeping human bodies alive while others monitor the capricious beat of a heart. it is five a.m. and the hospital hallways are almost entirely deserted. just a girl, dark-haired, staring up at the ceiling, muttering prayers, a litany. "eliott demaury?" 

"here." he stands on tired legs, brushing off invisible dust from his jeans. it isn't his first time here, and it won't be his last, definitely not, at least not now. eliott follows the nurse until he's sat on a bed, answering questions blandly, a needle sliding easily into a vein under the surface of his skin. he's given crackers and orange juice for the after. vacantly, eliott watches the blood bag fill up, slowly, like his bank account soon will be. 

two years ago was his first time in here. he's donated blood before, yes, but not like this. this isn't a donation. quite the opposite. it was for fun, then, a bit of extra money in the holes of his pockets. now he has to. now the money falls right out of the widening holes of his pockets. a couple of minutes later, a nurse slides the needle back out, plastering a band-aid over the small hole left behind. the glass of orange juice is drained soon enough. he looks around the room, adjusting to the darkness the room is bathed in, colorless, empty, bereft of warmth in the lights or the people or the song playing faintly in the background. "you can go," says the young man, after several more minutes of waiting. "have you got a pass for next time?"

the pass was a license of sorts, for indicating that one was healthy enough to return to give blood every two weeks instead of eight. it wasn't healthy like that, not really, but the specifics were lost in order to keep the vampires at bay (drained bodies were found bloated in dirty river water during a shortage) (red and blue lights slid across his face when he walked across the bridge home). people were desperate to give in order to receive, so it worked, criticism buried under the poverty covering the city. "yeah," eliott digs around for his wallet to produce a laminated piece of paper, pushing it towards him until it touches the edge of his fingers. "is two weeks two a.m. okay?"

"sure." the glow of the hospital computer illuminates the severe angles of his face, reflecting green on the lenses of his glasses, hollowing cheekbones. eliott's eyes go toward his nametag. _arthur_. the clicking of the keyboard stops. he looks up, a small smile on his face. there's a small device in his ear eliott sees when he turns briefly, barely visible under the revolting lighting. "you've been here often," he comments, simply. "have you gotten a raise yet?" eliott frowns, fingers absently finding the bandage on his inner elbow. 

"not yet."

"probably next time, then."

he nods, "i guess so." it ends there, the conversation. they say goodbye, stepping out into the hallway, and the girl sitting on the plastic seat is no longer there anymore, just saint joseph sitting perched on top of where she was, face twisted in contempt, mocking, a clock that ticks several pulses too fast. halfway out of the sliding doors, though, a familiar voice calls to him, boyish — not to him, no, but the nurse inside the building, a soft _hey_ from an unknown chamber. he looks over his shoulder. around him, the hallway stays dark. in another entrance, near the church, there's a man strapped in a gurney being wheeled in; he's bleeding, _hypovolemic shock_ , punctures in his neck. eliott hears it faintly just as he steps out. 

glancing skywards, he cranes his neck, bone clicking, and it shoots a tingle of pleasure down his spine. upwards, upwards, the stars are few and far between, pollution too common. he feels small, the world so wide, so wide, wide enough to fit all the dead matter that once wrapped itself around the universe, alive. he sighs. the streets parallel the hospital hallways. deserted, lacking even hollowed souls. eliott doesn't hear the footsteps coming up to him. they're blunt, soft, not meant to be heard. 

no one breathes down his neck but he feels the way someone hovers — you don't need to see, or hear, sense is already enough. eliott turns abruptly — lucas is all there, all doe-eyes and sharp teeth and soft skin, hand poised to where eliott's arms were. eliott stares, and lucas stares back. an awkwardness exists between them, one eliott can't seem to shake off. it's his fault, probably, the distance to travel to him too short. awkwardness to keep himself from wanting certain things he shouldn't want. 

"hi," lucas croaks, hand dropping back to his side. his eyes go about his face, inadvertently trying to memorise the details that make up his face in this light, what he's missed in the several weeks he hasn't seen him. "you finished work?"

for a while eliott blinks, not used to the mundanity of the question. "no. no, i—," he holds out his left arm, watching as lucas' gaze goes to the small band-aid, how a spot of red bled through. "the store shut down. i'm— donating," eliott finishes, swallowing. 

"oh."

"do you need to be somewhere?" the words stumble out before he has half a mind to stop them. 

there's a moment where lucas just looks at him, a small grin spreading on his face. eliott steps aside the slightest to let him pass. lucas doesn't go, though. he shakes his head and says _no_ , the syllable suddenly small on his tongue, strangely shy. "why?" he tilts his head to the side, the smooth plane of his neck translucent in the shivery light.

"just asking," eliott waves away, scratching at his nose. he feels heat rise in his cheeks, the feeling disconcerting, incongruous, even. he hasn't felt embarrassment in a long while, somehow lucas renders his actions to be at odds with what he's used to himself. there are sirens, and the sirens fade into the distance, maybe turned off, loud voices eating at the silence, wheels against linoleum. 

human bodies were rather fallible. it's a record stuck on repeat, those sounds, echoing around them in a loop, faint and distant and slumbering. 

"i see," lucas nods, biting on lips. then after a moment that drags for more than a minute: "do you want to go eat with me?"

eating, the verb strange when it's shaped by a mouth that does the opposite; _eating_ , like eating on a date, like eating implies two people at a restaurant, at a diner, at a bar, and the promise of something that flickers brighter than attraction, the same attraction eliott can't offer the same way lucas can't. _don't_ , eliott tells himself. _you know how it ends, you know how it always ends_. it ends with eliott leaving last, warm hands gone cold and the bitter taste of heartbreak he can't swallow down, stuck in the back of his throat. it stays around him as if it was an ill-fated disease. eliott can't find it in himself to reply. lucas plays with the straps of his canvas bag, the same canvas bag that held the groceries, waiting. it's fitting, somehow. 

he wants this so badly it hurts. _this_ — the strange relationship they have, one full of holes, no promises to be kept, secrets locked in the closets of their damaged minds. eliott looks skyward again, breathing out. he feels lucas stare at his neck, where the bruise he left was, on the spot below his collarbone, on his second rib to the right, but it's faded already. their eyes meet. pacific blue, horror red hidden behind the darkness, light hidden further. eliott pulls his sleeve back down, taking a small step back as lucas takes one forward, raising an eyebrow. 

"where to?"

breakfast is an old-time americana diner, twenty-four hours, devoid of people. the neons are tasteless, but it adds to the tacky charm of the restaurant, the greasy fries and the saccharine cola. they sit in a booth far away from the windows. opposite him, lucas orders a coffee, black, their knees touching the slightest. the bag of blood is beside him, in plastic packs, tucked beside him, hidden from view. eliott orders a drink, too, and some pancakes. it comes steaming in front of him. the sun is still hidden. eliott eats, lucas watches, curious, almost. it's an odd thing to do. eliott lets him, anyway, albeit abashedly. there's something in the way he looks at him, eyes wide full of longing until he's staring back at the pitch of his coffee, watching his reflection ripple across it as eliott tucks into his pancakes, poorly made. the colors tangle all around them. black, the coffee, their clothes; red, the floor, the wallpaper, the seat, lucas' lips. it makes for a mismatched scene. they glance back and forth, neither of them commenting on the itch they feel to just — touch. 

daylight has sunken into the very tops of buildings by the time they leave the diner. lucas pays for his coffee, a long black, untouched, steaming still. little has been said. they part, at the end of the street, at the block right before the blood bank. lucas kisses him under a bus stand, and it's hungry, full of lust, and eliott kisses him back, and his teeth scrape against his bottom lip, drawing blood. his tongue is hot, copper-layered, and eliott feels warm down to the bone despite the cold fingers curled around the bottom of his sweater, entirely so. 

"i have to go," eliott is first to say. 

it's a lie, either of them should know by now. but lucas nods, and if his face could be flushed he would look it. "me too." a thumb touches his bottom lip. "you taste like syrup," the muttered words are rather sweet, like what he tasted of. averted eyes adorn the sentence. the way he does that makes eliott strangely fond. this is a different lucas than what he's used to, younger, less reckless, timid. 

"— did you like it?" 

the fingers that held eliott's shirt fall away, until he's shrinking a bit into his clothes. "i missed it," he mumbles. eliott smiles, he has to, he can't not. cruel affection floods the insides of his lungs. 

lucas takes a step closer under the shade, away from the sun starting to creep out from under the heavy clouds, converse shoes dragging along the pavement, and eliott repeats, again, weakly: "i have to go." 

"so do i," but neither of them walk away, back to places they don't necessarily need to be. eliott just needs to get away, fast. when eliott makes to leave, though, lucas holds onto his wrist loosely. and he hesitates before raising it, pressing a kiss on the patch of skin where the vein is, as if to feel the pulse, feeling it flutter harshly. eliott's stomach fills with moths, their wings strained against ribs, beating violently into vicious possibilities. sadistic ones, ones that can only hurt you inside out or outside in, depending on where you let it. but, like a masochist, he's obsessed with the pain of possibility — after all, he's only human, and humans are fallible, literally and figuratively. 

but lucas lets go of him at last. 

"see you around, eliott."

with light fingers, he touches the shallow cut on his bottom lip as lucas turns the other way, sore in the good kind of way. good because lucas left it there. 

wind stirs the dead leaves, rattling about the streets. he's left sitting on the broken bench under the bus stand, watching the sun rise above the pensive architecture. he raises a hand towards the light, watching it fracture, warm between the gaps of his fingers. then eliott holds onto it. he holds onto it all the way back home, in absurd hopes of keeping it inside the hollows of his bones, until he needs it to drip out and cover somebody else's body. 

  
  
  
  


_what are we made of?_ lines and contours and valleys and tones and shades, complex systems that are pointless to recreate, its beauty far too impossible. _we're beauty and pain and nerves and tissue_ — only half of this is sketched on a notepad eliott has balanced on his knees. impossibly beautiful to be drawn by the human hand, impossible to capture. there's charcoal on his fingers. dark, dark charcoal, staining the messy white pages and the edges of his shirt.

he hasn't drawn in too long, the pencil too foreign underneath his fingertips. neon shades the furniture in his apartment into long shapes, rendering them uncanny, eerie. there are drawings everywhere, everywhere. empty white pages and cheap charcoal and a longing to draw he hasn't felt since he stopped drawing. it tugs on his heartstrings, this want, and at first he drew the long silhouettes and sharp buildings, then it came to the features of a face. _lines and contours and valleys and tones and shade_. eyelashes, pupils, a piece of hair that falls a certain way. eliott doesn't really know what he's doing. he draws and draws and draws, until his floor is covered with half-finished sketches. then the features, the eyelashes, pupils, hair, the high slope of a nose changes into a face. it becomes a face eliott has come to dream in the odd hours of the day. everything colorless, like the boy that eliott dreams of. like everything the boy is made of. 

complex systems are pointless to draw; pointless inside lucas' body. _what are we made of?_ lines and contours and valleys and tones and shade. eliott traces each line from his memory, its beauty far too impossible to create. 

the sketchpad balanced on his knees faces the window overlooking nothing at all. just the neons as they reflect and reflect and reflect, bringing color to the drawing eliott has on his knees, all bitter blacks and winter whites. then the colors become blue and pink and red and purple. eliott stops, then, when his arm starts to hurt, the wound on his arm too fresh. he holds it up to the light, to the neon sign outside his apartment ( _ADULT ONLY_ ). it's not a very good drawing, not really, rushed and full of empty feelings eliott can't hold within this frame of a body. complex feelings, like complex systems that make up a complex human being. 

however, eventually it gets too tiring. he washes his hands in the sink, watching the water swirl gray, then disappear clear down the drain. with the window open, a breeze flutters the loose sheets of paper until they skitter across the wooden flooring. eliott picks them all up, one by one, the trees, the blood bank, the candles that burned on the altar, pupils, eyelashes, mouth, hands. he picks them all up. they get folded and filed away, tucked in the pages of untouched novels where a layer of dust has laid rest over the covers. he might hate them when he wakes up next week, if he can get to sleep. those aren't meant for eyes that aren't his own. unlike the artwork he once did in art school — those were for everyone. 

  
  
  
  


the neighbourhood eliott lives in is partly a quiet one, made only due to the illicit things that happened behind closed doors, sometimes ugly. he doesn't mind them, though. just the men that knock on the wrong doors and grab onto flesh too hard, men that talk too loudly or men that drink too much. men that wear a foul crown made of the bones they picked. 

it smells vaguely of formaldehyde and cheap perfume as eliott walks down the stairwell, and with each step it creaks, deafening against the stirring of this sleepless apartment building. as soon as eliott is outside, though, it's replaced with the scent of rubbish and cigarette smoke. it overwhelms after being in bed for a week, where his senses were all numbed, waking up only to eat crackers and drink decaf and wash his medication down with it. eliott showered for the first time in three days tonight. a piece of paper is tucked in his jacket pocket; he hasn't washed the charcoal off his fingertips, and it leaves stains when he touches the fabric of his clothes. 

he doesn't know why he brought it out, the sketch, when it's all uneven and unfinished, pointless even to himself. the paper wrinkles, warm the more he turns it over in his hands on the bus ride to the hospital. january has come too soon. with every breath that comes out air turns white. eliott walks the familiar path to the small building by the side of the hospital, far away from the church and the graveyard and the people that linger around in silent mourning. it's everywhere — _dying_ , it has a terrible habit of following where things grow. or the opposite, as spring does with winter. an endless circle, a ring to wear around your left finger, perfectly symmetrical. 

what comes after is routine as the fortnight before: forms are filled out, blood pressure taken, a needle inserted, blood drained, orange juice and a small slice of cake, a bank deposit notification on his phone, _can i please come in on friday in two weeks?_ the inside of his elbow is blue and purple where the needle went in and out, in and out, woven like gentle fabric. now the band-aid is almost permanent, maybe to hold the wound in (possibly to avoid the looks) (probably to avoid the way his own gaze seems to drift down, curious). 

snow stubbornly dusts the pavement, already icy, dirty. he almost slips but an arm is there to steady him. adrenaline makes his heart beat in disarray, which makes eliott clutch onto the sleeve harder, balancing himself on the sidewalk, all the air winced out. eliott looks up. 

"— hey."

_"hey_ ," he says back. 

lucas shakes him out of his hold, so eliott snatches his hand away, as if burnt. "convenient. the hospital's right there," he gestures vaguely to the direction he came from with a thing of a grin. the distance between their bodies is too blatant. deliberate. 

"the road is right there, too," eliott points out. lucas giggles, amused, a bright sort of sound; eliott wants to hear it again. drily, he adds: "thanks. for saving me."

a shrug. "you still come here?" the question is hastily asked. 

"i guess."

in the month that followed the phone call, eliott has given out applications and resumes. _hello, i'm eliott demaury. i'm looking for a job, is there anything i can do?_ the sentence was repeated at least fifteen times before he was taken into consideration. no one called back. his heart stings faintly with rejection. "what are you doing here?" he asks, then, ignoring the empty expression lucas wears. the crystalline layer of frost in the background makes everything shine. 

"there's something on your face—"

nothing ends up answered, because lucas points to his cheek, blinking, and eliott is rubbing away at it hastily, unable to see where and what's on his face. he reaches out to rub it off, touch cold, tracing lightly down the side of eliott's face for the slightest of seconds. eliott freezes under it. it is an unusually tender touch, conveying intimacy neither of them have permitted yet. he sees the words that collect on the tip of lucas' tongue, the words that never leave. then his touch is gone just as fast. a gray smear is barely visible beneath the forlorn street lamps. emergency vehicles go by, the broken ballad of finitude falling around them. 

"charcoal," it's all that lucas says. "you can draw?"

"i'm not any good," and the drawing in his pocket burns a hole through the fabric. lucas rubs his thumb on his sweater. it disappears into the grayness he wears. "i haven't drawn in a long time."

an eyebrow is raised. "what made you start?" 

— _you_. a perfect circle, where it ends and where it begins. 

"just—," he stops, shrugging. a light drizzle of icy rain begins to fall, turning everything cold, colder than it should be, but not as cold as the fingers that touched his face, not cold enough. eliott hadn't noticed the crimson stains in the gaps of his teeth. he pulls the jacket closer to himself, rain clinging to his eyelashes, blurring his vision. maybe he's just seeing things. "i have time now. i don't have a job."

"will you show me?" those words are said in earnest. eliott clears his throat. there's a sweetness in his stare again, the sort of sweetness that can choke, bitterness at the end, caught in the throat until it's coughed out. eliott averts his thoughts away from it. they move undercover in front of the clinic. there's no one there by then, and they sit on the ground, watching the rain fall around them, hands to themselves, eliott's jacket halfway zipped, shivering. lucas seems unbothered by the temperature. of course he is. 

"there's an art gallery," rain falls harder on the roof. "it's near my place," eliott breathes out. it isn't a date, it isn't. "better than my drawings."

silence that lasts for a moment more than a minute follows. eliott feels him watching him. "— will you be there?" there's sheerness to the question. eliott watches him back, searching the opaque pupils, red rims. "during nighttime?" _this is not a date_. eliott digs around in his pocket to find the cracked phone with the almost dead battery, putting it on the concrete separating them, unlocked. 

"yeah," he nods. lucas holds it tentatively in his hands as he types his number in quickly. a few seconds later, his phone vibrates. he's saved himself as lucas, without a surname, a vampire emoji accompanying it, childish in an endearing way. eliott smiles down at the cracked screen. "give me your phone." lucas raises his eyebrows but hands it over; eliott finds his name, adds a raccoon emoji. their eyes meet, eliott doesn't break away. "i can't sleep. the eyebags," he explains.

"what about me?" lucas asks. "if i wasn't— that?"

eliott's eyes run over his appearance, briefly, to avoid staring at the pretty lines of his body. "a hedgehog," he offers after a second or two. "your hair."

"pass me back your phone?" eliott unlocks it for him. lucas takes it again, erasing the vampire, replacing it with a hedgehog emoji. "there. we're the same now," he holds out the screen to show him. their fingers graze for the merest of moments when lucas passes the phone back to him, both holding the same chill, both the same iciness, both the same. lucas stands, all of a sudden, and mumbles, "i need to go to bed. it's late."

"me too," and eliott stands, too, slipping the phone inside his pocket, jacket zipping further up. eliott is flustered. then the awkwardness slips back between, lucas close then far away again, standing farther away but touching his hand, almost holding. he looks down at it. 

they miss each other's gaze, perhaps on purpose. "you're cold," he comments quietly, before letting go. there was a diplomatic hue to those words, an observation, nothing personal, nothing informal. not — intimate. eliott holds his breath. he nods. _because_ _it's cold out here_. they hear activity again from the church, or hospital, or graveyard. are they friends now, then? damp fingers find the piece of scrap in his pocket, inadvertently crumpling it. rain clings to every angle possible, soaking him down the bone, deeper than that. 

"i'll text you."

  
  
  
  


(

_hey, it's eliott_

_i have free tickets_

_are you free next week?_

_it's fine if you're not_

two lies. the tickets weren't free; his friend was too busy, he decided the explanation would be, if lucas bothered to ask. it would be fine if lucas wasn't free. no, no, it wouldn't. it would, but it wouldn't. he doesn't have anyone else to go with. he doesn't even like that gallery much. 

)

  
  
  
  


_the sun is warm_ , it's the name of the exhibition they enter in a nameless art gallery, a gallery full of replicas and facsimiles of the artwork belonging to the louvre. the louvre closes too early, belonging to those whose tide brings them into briny water when their time comes, dragging them out to sea. it isn't for those who stay in the shallows. it doesn't belong to them — it isn't fair, they say. after all, it is said that only through the brevity of life can one see beauty around them. lucas proves them right and wrong all the same. it makes a cruel mockery out of him, this exhibit, the monets and van goghs and rembrandts, oranges and reds and yellows surrounding him like a broken halo, drawing color out of his cheeks in skinny illusions. 

touching is allowed inside that gallery. they can touch all they want, replicas don't mind. they can be repainted and reprinted to look the same, rarely destroyed by the warm steam of breathing. so lucas touches, fingertips gentle as they follow paint strokes, feeling their bumps, expression wistful, almost. the gallery sits quiet around them. only the sound of footfalls on the wooden flooring and murmured conversations. he leans forward to read the small placards pasted on the wall beside the frames, eliott watching his mouth move, silently molding the words. 

impression, sunrise looks back at them with its cyans and contrasting shades of orange, brushwork certain, unwavering, aggressive yet delicate in some places. there's heaviness in his heart, eliott realizes, eyeing it. _it's beautiful_. lucas traces the circle of the sun in cautious yearning, as if wanting to feel its warmth, mapping the reflection it makes on the cool, calm sea, though guarded all the same. 

"i've always liked monet," eliott says into the open space, cutting the silence. 

lucas retrieves his hand, holding onto his wrist. "i never cared for it much," he admits. "in high school i only liked maths and science, but—," nouns are sighed, like the past is too difficult to share, "maybe i like him, too." 

they wander around the rest of the paintings in the exhibition, touching and seeing, reading the names and their descriptions, the history they left behind for this gray present, and while eliott is stalling at the gift shop lucas goes through the keyrings and postcards and cheap prints with odd avidity. he buys a postcard. _impression, sunrise_. on it, the hues are rendered duller. even duller, when he and lucas are outside the gallery, unsure on what to do.

"i did literature."

a small smirk is turned towards him briefly. "i can see that."

eliott scoffs, reaching into his pocket for the marlboro. it's a bad habit, a habit he can't stop. like lucas lallemant has become a bad habit. he's one of many. his hands hurt from the chill, shielding the small flame the lighter makes as he lights the cigarette between his lips. lucas probably wouldn't want to kiss him afterwards. he doesn't even know why he considers this, but it's a thought that bothers, invasive, similar to what splinters do under skin. 

"what do you want to do now?" he asks through the thin haze of smoke, lucas watching him as he does. ash is flicked to the ground. the metal rail eliott leans against is cold even through the several layers he wears, hearing the cars as they go by, air a blend of fog and mist. 

several figures from the gallery step out, eerie eyes darting towards him. despite constant reassurances of humanity's safety on the nightly nine p.m. news, mistrust still lingers, inexorably, ushering those with a heart that beats indoors. there's no sympathy for those who stay out, not even while lying still on a silvery table utterly pale, picture of a porcelain doll, not even with linen covering their faces, not even then. 

he blows smoke out of his nostrils before stepping on the cigarette with his converse shoes. "why do you do that?" eliott pauses. _impression, sunrise_ is clutched in a severely gentle hold. "— smoke?"

"everyone does it," is all he answers with after a minute, a brittle explanation, glaring at the brick wall lucas stands in front of. it is true that everyone does, as it is also true that it is a choice that twists into addiction. like bad habits often start. unlike how they often end. 

lucas looks straight at him when he speaks. "you'll die earlier; it's all over the news," he adds, somehow flat. "in school, they said: absorbed through the lung tissue, into the bloodstream, cells turning on you. small cell lung cancer, it's called— for smokers, that is. a slow and painful death. fluid in the chest, bleeding in the airways. that's how it usually is."

"like love," eliott offers bluntly.

it's the perfect allegory for an unrequited sort of love. absorbed through the lung tissue, into the bloodstream, cells turning on you. a sickness — there's even a word for it, many words. a slow and painful death. fluid in the chest, bleeding in the airways. if you survived it, you might go back to it despite it all. that's what smoke in the lungs does to you. what unrequited love in the lungs does to you, too. "yeah," lucas averts his gaze. "like love."

some kind of silence hangs over them in a way that prickles, thorny. these conversations feel too personal, he thinks, irregular, unusual and out of place. eliott doesn't know if he prefers this or if he prefers the things to be left unsaid. lucas has his skull against the wall, as if leaving a period. eliott carries on, though.

"i've tried to quit before," he tells him, words almost lost to wind. he has tried many times, but seeking the fleeting pleasure is better than suffering, and so the cycle goes. "it hasn't— it hasn't worked."

"i guess there are some things you just can't," lucas sighs, lifting his shirt to tuck the postcard in his waistband. it sounds similar to the final end of dialogue. eliott takes steps forward until lucas is inches away, before pressing him tight against the wall, kissing him. it's a slow sort of kiss, mouths slotting together, touches light. urgent only in its depth, when kissing him feels a lot like sinking into fatal waters. someone whistles over the roar of a motorcycle. 

if eliott were to imagine what they looked like, it would be this: two faceless figures, lost amongst the tangle of vines growing on the brick wall, ivy weaving along skin, attaching them from limb to limb, woven until it chokes, until they become one together alongside the scenery itself. _come home with me_ , it's a light demand, his fingertips linger, pressing on warm skin. lucas guides him home down unfamiliar alleys, seemingly unaware of the darkness around him. he stops at odd intervals to kiss him, each kiss growing more desperate when at last lucas unlocks his door, the porch groaning under his feet.

it smells heavily of dirt inside and, underlying it, a light layer of lucas' perfume. "it isn't much," the words are repeated back to him, perfectly symmetrical. his face, when eliott looks over, is similarly in perfect symmetries underneath the shards of moonlight eclipsing the windows. the difference is the vastness of the house and its colors — black and red, black and red, his door, his floor, but maybe it's only the shadows performing its trickery. 

"i don't mind. i like it this way," he replies from the threshold. lucas offers him a soft laugh. genuine, now, stepping in deeper to allow eliott in. his heart beats uneven. he barely has time to take it all in before lucas is dragging him upstairs into one of the many rooms, empty, aside from a mattress on the ground, bedsheet stretched over it. eliott sneezes. dust shimmers in the moonlit room, smothering the small chandelier nobody bothered to turn on. lucas apologises softly, with the softest hint of sadness. he shakes his head, _i don't mind_. clothes are removed, hands on bony hips, mouth everywhere. 

"can i—," it's a split second of hesitation, lucas between his thighs, hovered over his torso. his nail traces over the ribs poking out through skin, on his second rib to the right, where the mark has faded over the weeks. eliott nods. there's an inevitable edge of pain when he sucks at the skin, fangs extending, sinking into the surface, tongue warm as he licks the wound with stark craving. he must have fed earlier, because these movements makes lucas face redden the slightest, particularly when eliott pulls him close, pressing his lips down the column on his neck, feeling the sparse heat it emits. it's him that's between his thighs now, sinking to the ground, knees aching. soreness is forgotten when all that comes out of lucas' mouth are punctured clauses, broken in the middle, the noises crude to his ears. lucas touches him on the head after some time, moving him up, and eliott lies next to him, exhaling roughly, air hot. not even a second later, then, lucas raises his chin up, kissing him softly, the bitter taste spreading. he wraps himself up in him, ankles touching. "please," lucas whispers, the request needy, and eliott nods, pleased. 

it isn't an entirely soft surface, the mattress old, clinging onto dust, dust clinging onto it. their bodies aren't used to it yet. eliott presses him down, and the mattress huffs, and the floorboards creak like there are old ghosts under it. the wind outside howls. somehow, the ghosts have strayed, swaying the chandelier gingerly, refracting the moonlight through the broken glass of the window. the noises are too loud without any neighbours, but it's an orchestra making up the inner parts of lucas' life. eliott thinks h. there's the sound of things unwrapping and eliott presses in, lucas sighs, shaky, fingernails sharp against his sides, dragging down. the springs under it groan, as do the figures on top of it. lucas huffs, but the air that comes out is cold on his face. lucas looks at him this time, face open, arm not thrown over his face. it's a vision in inky crimsons— a fallen angel. but fallen angels were once angels, too. he comes first with eliott's hands on him, dying breaths, and it's fast, over too quickly. lucas' nails dig into his palm, whimpering, oversensitive, the friction the sheets make against his skin _too much, too much, too much_. 

after eliott comes the world grows heavy around him, exhausted. the cheap sheets scratch against his skin, but it's a familiar sort of feeling, like the sheets he has at home, but older. smelling vaguely of must. there's only the sound of breathing. one set — _his_. lucas lies behind him, mostly silent, hands running over the places where he pressed too hard, as if wanting to soothe the wounds. eliott doesn't mind it, though. eliott smooths circles over the bony edges of his hips. he exhales, and it comes out grave, the touches eliott allows too tender. he coils a bit under those. they're naked, thoroughly exposed, and eliott feels lucas seeing through him, when all that he is is transparent. "do you have a blanket?" it's the first perfectly structured sentence that was said in a while. 

for a second lucas looks confused. "oh," he blinks owlishly, looking down at his own body. "oh— i'll get it." he gets up, eliott watches the pretty, peculiar edges of his body as he leaves, wispy in the moonlight. jesus stares at him from the wall eliott is turned towards. maybe left by the previous owner, maybe by lucas himself. closing his eyes, he lies back, hearing the blunt footsteps coming from somewhere in this labyrinthine house. it's cold in here. eliott feels alone. 

no sound comes aside from a light breeze, barely awake, but awake enough to startle from the fabric settling over hot skin. the mattress is too hard for it to dip under lucas' weight, body covered under the blanket, eyes now open. "what time is it?"

"i don't know," lucas replies truthfully, getting closer until he's all wrapped around him, his coolness a small blessing. "probably four, i think."

"it's pretty late." the syllables are slurred, fatigue creeping up on him fast. the paisley wallpaper stares back at him from behind lucas, colorless in this room. he takes a moment to look around, ignoring the way lucas follow his gaze, suddenly guarded. he sees the old floorboards and the broken window, the cobwebs threaded over pointy pieces of glass, an inky set of spindly trees shivering outside. "do you sleep in here?" he asks, curiosity getting the better of him. 

an uncomfortable silence suffocates that makes eliott feel too bare. lucas shakes his head in disagreement. "no." it is a plain answer, no apologies or justifications, he doesn't need it. "i sleep elsewhere," he mutters, voice emotionless. "i have a room— i can take you there, if you want to see."

"you don't have to."

"i want to show you," and it's final, because lucas looks away. 

eliott wraps the blanket over his hips when they stand, cotton brushing quietly against the floor as he does so. lucas has his underwear on already. the corridors are narrow and dark, lights faulty or flickering, like the ones in his apartment building. he can't remember the way back by the time lucas opens the door to his room. it looks the same as every other room they've passed when they stand in front of a closed door, but inside is very much different. a coffin sits away from the door to the side, lid leaning against wallpaper, open. inconspicuous looking, almost invisible in the soft light of a lamp. the floorboards are the same, but pots hide the surface. pots of plants, green ones, spray bottles beside them, growing everywhere, and it smells like a forest in here, green and alive — like the scent of dirt the house carries. lucas looks at him again, waiting, wariness in his pose, arms wrapping himself, embittered by the lack of love he has within himself. 

"you surprise me." 

there's a rustling of fabric as he sits on a cramped cot a foot away from his coffin. "the plants?" 

"— everything."

plastic stars are stuck on the ceiling, and they glow faintly with wistful charm when eliott cranes his neck, tinged green, operated by rare ultraviolet light, dark ceiling spinning stars into an earthly cosmos, visible to the naked eye. "they're the last thing i like to see before i sleep," lucas clarifies at the gesture, a certain fondness laced in his voice. eliott stares at him. he's given a thin smile. 

lucas is a riddle, as labyrinthine as the house he lives in, full of interesting rooms and narrow corridors, eliott might get lost in them, and there might be water stains on wallpaper, holes in the ground he might fall through. 

eliott sits beside him, bed frame creaking. "it's a nice room." it is, truly. full of the characteristics belonging to him, the human characteristics. in front of them, the coffin lays waiting, raised, and it looks expensive, scarlet silk lining the inside, chips and scratches faint on the wood outside. when he peers in, it becomes a void. lucas hands him his clothes, and he puts them on, quickly, feeling slightly shy with the way lucas' eyes seem to wander. he feels — wanted. probably. it's a good feeling. 

"my mother left this to me," lucas waves a hand around the coffin, the room, the house. 

it doesn't feel enough when eliott says, "i'm sorry for your loss." 

"she's not dead," he laughs, patting the cot beside him absently. "she just left. said the devil was wearing my skin, but was kind enough to buy me this," a finger traces the edges of the coffin, "and give me the house you're in." eliott heard sadness in the inner-workings of his sentence. all the bitterness having lost its edges. lucas meets his gaze through the dull luminescence, then, and asks, hoarsely: "do you think i have a soul?"

"i don't know."

"i don't know, either."

"that's—" eliott swallows, trying to find the right words. _i don't think i have a soul_. no, no, those are the wrong words. "that's alright, i think," he answers after a bit, "not knowing. maybe it's better this way."

"maybe," he sighs, twining their fingers together on the tangled mess of sheets. they've never held hands before. it's a rare moment he wants to cherish, eliott thinks distantly. finger pressing on finger, the ones eliott touching strangely nerveless. holding hands with him feels like what he imagined — cold, yet warm in a way that doesn't come from a complicated synthesis of glucose and water and carbon dioxide. lucas lets go too soon, though, to move. plants brush against his leg as he moves a few steps back, until the back of his knees hit the casket. "would you like to come in?"

that makes eliott chuckle, the question oddly ordinary for this sort of scenario. "we won't fit, lucas."

"the only benefit to being average sized, i guess," lucas presses, finding his hand again, tugging. his legs weaken, finding himself standing, nearing the black hole. "i'll try not to let you suffocate inside. promise."

he puts a foot inside the coffin, and the material under his toes is soft, velvet-like, the morbid mundanity of it striking. eliott looks over at him. "bury me in this if i do, yeah?" 

and then he goes all the way in, lucas following him right after. 

inside of it is nicer than he expected. it's a tight fit, comfortably cramped, legs slotted against one another, a cloud of breath hovering between them, limbs clingy. every sound is amplified, from the way eliott breathes out, bones creaking as they shift, trying to get acquainted. lucas has his head beside him, eyelashes shadowing over his cheeks. he hasn't shut the lid. eliott is unsure on whether lucas plans to. "ah," lucas huffs, allowing their hands to overlap. "you'll get used to it after a while." almost holding. "give it a few minutes." eliott hums. he's tired, vision hazy around the edges, but his body's too stiff to sleep. and it's cold in there, too cold. the breeze blows hiemal air in. "eliott?" there's an allure to his voice, siren-like— an enchantment, really, a hymn. eliott is bound to look his way, fighting the sleep weighing heavy over his eyelids when he blinks. 

"yeah?"

a singular heartbeat echoes around the pale valance, taunting. "you're pretty." the bewildering comment shades eliott all red. it is said like a fact, attention roaming around the edges of his faces in a shy way, a cautious way. "especially like this," lucas adds, swallowing, sinking deeper into the casket. eliott realises he's holding onto his arm. 

"you do, too," his voice airy with a nonchalance that only comes from caring too much. "pretty. you always have been." lucas says nothing. _this is not a date_ , the words repeat like a song, that song, the song from the supermarket, following him through the alleys and side streets of his brain. eliott can't shake the wrongness away. it gets eerier inside the coffin, when lucas shuts his eyes, briefly, exhaling by habit, still like a corpse, body smooth and heavy like stone. eliott loosens his hold. he sits up, then, turning to watch an undisturbed lucas lallemant. 

he's not truly asleep, though, eliott guesses. quietly, he climbs out, suddenly needing to get away, heavily aware that relationships like this are the ones that are supposed to be without hurt. eliott can smell him everywhere even with the plants— citrus shampoo, something coppery that fails to be masked. the room feels stuffy with it. "eliott?" it's that voice again, or maybe it's only the way his name feels inside lucas' mouth.

"sorry— i forgot i needed to take my medication." he fumbles around, digging into the back pockets of his jeans. it's not a lie, but it isn't the whole truth, either. if lucas realized, he doesn't comment on it. 

at that lucas steps out, bare feet on floorboards. "do you need water?"

"please." he nods, eliott holds onto his jeans, following him out. the kitchen is small and confined, dust covering every surface, old oil stains stuck on the stove, uncleaned for months, maybe years, and perhaps it stayed because of uninvited nostalgia, or perhaps because it's a stark reminder of a normalcy lucas has lost. a mug is offered. lucas filled it from the tap. he pops the pills out from the aluminium packet, tipping it onto his palm. one yellow bullet. eliott's being watched, but no questions come. with water it's an easy swallow, albeit unnecessary. he could have chewed on it if he wanted to. chalk and bitterness. "i'm bipolar," eliott says into the nothingness, trying to find focus on anywhere but his face. 

the silence is all-consuming. he doesn't know why he says this, when not everyone deserves to know or needs to, but for some reason he wanted lucas to know. as if they were close, as if this were a first date. as if they were lovers. eliott has grown out of caring for people who leave after finding out, they don't matter after a few rounds and a few months. disappointment is all that's usually left in his heart, leaving little room for shame, anger. he left those behind in high school. disappointment he couldn't leave behind. fear, too. it curls around his throat, stopping any other possible sentences. 

after several moments, lucas announces: "i drink blood."

soft, soundless laughter spills from his lips, one he can't help. "i'm serious," but his mouth is tugging up into a half-smile when he looks at lucas, who shrugs, heading towards the fridge. it's an old model, freezer on the top, refrigerator on the bottom, white spoilt into a nasty shade of yellow. blueish light spills into the darkness as lucas opens it, revealing rows and rows of blood bags, milk and corked wine, rotting fruit and cheese, sitting still on the shelf side by side. 

inside it resembles something trying very hard to be human, or a human trying very hard to be something else. the empty mug is set down. there are chips on the edges, jagged ceramic that could cut lips placed on wrong places. "you've seen me now." it's shut. in his vision, what's left of the faint blue light renders the background full of contrails. _i don't mind_. eliott observes him from the side, his flattened mouth, his awful eyes. "thanks for letting me see you," he mumbles. 

"we match." they don't, not really. but they do. _i'm a lot._

that makes lucas almost smile as he looks his way, washing his traces alight, _alive_ , his nose, his lips. "kind of, yeah."

"kind of."

eliott's hands envelop the mug, fingers turning numb from the tepid water. he takes a sip. lucas touches his shoulder, lightly, steering him towards the living room, or what's left of it, anyway. windows are boarded, brambles seeping in through their gaps, and it makes for a sight under the tarnished yellow of a chandelier. what's left of the few lightbulbs throws fractals everywhere, everything, from the plants to the sofa they sit on, walls, floor, kitchen, staircase. he ends up breathing in a layer of dust. it trembles gently.

"are you hungry?" lucas asks. he puts the mug down on the ground for him, playing with the drawstrings of his sweats absentmindedly. eliott watches him, arms sprawled, ankles crossed as lucas watches him back. a smear of blue for irises is all eliott manages to see. "i could heat up some soup for you," he suggests, airily. eliott rubs his eyes, remembering cans of soup in shopping baskets. spoilt milk and blood bags, the memories come all at once, altogether, all the three months they've known each other. he thinks of not eating, of not having to witness hunger claim him. but eliott's stomach growls, and it's an answer that ends that thought.

"thanks."

a nod, once. "tomato or pumpkin?" lucas pushes off the sofa, crossing the room to the kitchen, hands going through empty cupboards, opening and closing them until he's holding out two cans in his direction. 

eliott considers for a moment, before saying, "tomato."

another nod. "that used to be my favorite," he tells him, sounding far away, suspended halfway between the stovetop and the sofa, hearing clicks of a burner being lit, pot scraped over metal. small crystals of broken glass are littered just under the boarded window, glittering as eliott gets closer. "eliott?" it digs into his socked feet ever so slightly, sharp enough for it to bother but not enough to bleed. he turns into where lucas' voice came from.

"yeah?"

the tangy scent of soup surrounds them when eliott stands beside him. "it looks good." a silver spoon scrapes around the orange liquid. lucas glances back, then, letting out a short _hm_. eventually when puffs of steam rises, he steps aside for lucas to pour it into the small bowl set on the counter, a similar silver spoon by its side. 

"here," lucas pushes it towards him until it's an inch from his fingertips. "it's all i have."

he shakes his head. "i like tomato soup." it's all it takes for lucas to smile. eliott eats, greedily, the same way lucas watches, fingers tapping melodically on the counter, strangeness in his stare. he burns his tongue on it. when their eyes meet they hold it, seemingly caught in the act, before he drops his gaze back to the bowl. stainless steel scraping on ceramic is the denouement to their meal. eliott stands, lucas stands, too. 

in this film, this scene plays out in all the shades of grayscale, eliott washing the bowl in the sink, lucas, youthful lines and boyish bones, drying, and the domesticity of it all should be out of place, but instead they slip into their roles too easily. too, too easily. and later, they're sat back on the sofa, dust brushed away by an old broom, cold blood waiting in a fridge to be consumed a few metres away, eliott right beside him, warm-blooded, bleeding over him. together they lie there, lucas watches some random black and white movie from the fifties, eliott strokes his hair, not really paying attention.

it's the middle of a commercial break when he speaks, running fingers over chestnut strokes. "what do you want?" 

lucas stops. the question shatters the air around them, the tv murmuring pleadingly, ringing thin in his ears. "— why?"

"you're not human."

there's no venom, any syllables that could come after unspoken. but it's the wrong thing to say, apparently, because under the flashing shadows of nameless actors, lucas' expression turns passive. eliott withdraws his hand, an apology scratching at his throat. it's fickle words he doesn't want to say, so he breathes out instead, the sound mild. "i should go."

"you don't have to," lucas mutters, eyes trained on the pixels of the old tv. eliott gets up, sitting properly now, lucas' head on his lap. his hair looks like pitch, oily over his jeans, like petroleum. _he's beautiful_ , eliott thinks, in an off-handed way, effortless with his glamoured charm. he wants to touch again, he almost does. almost, but doesn't.. 

gently, eliott slides away from him until he's kneeling. it hurts his knees. it's a confession, maybe, and it's then that lucas finally looks at him through the holes of latticed wood and fabric. "but you want me to."

no apology, eliott didn't expect any different, lucas leans into the sofa. there's no _see you_ as eliott puts on his shoes by the door, splinters digging into his palm as he holds onto the edges of the threshold for balance. dirty images of saints follow his movement with shifty eyes. the door that shuts behind him rattles the hinges. the porch moans under his shoes, strangling the static of the old tv inside, and the difference in brightness of the faded morning light makes his eyes water. 

first dates don't end with quick fucks — at least not like this. 

eliott falls asleep at home, his home, and it should feel safe, but it isn't safe against his mind, the nightmares it conjures up, the rifle that's pointed at him, fangs bared, lucas behind it, bullet not missing when he shoots. 

  
  
  
  
  


a girl dies. her death is so gruesome she's forced her way into the morning, afternoon, evening news, staining the neighbourhood she was found in with an odor of poisoned grief (fear is much like poison, possessing the same characteristics, even the physical ones). although pixelated, her blonde hair could be made out, knotted with dried blood, a pale, pale arm that kept peeking limply out from under white linen no matter how hard they tried to put it back, for modesty's sake, they said. to preserve her dignity, they said, despite her lack of clothes, her face so devoid of color some wondered if she was ever alive. her name remained anonymous. the interviewer, with her red lipstick, red like the headlines and the font lining the bottom of his tv in neat rows, looked blank, unsurprised, maybe— looked as if she had stolen all the colors of the crime scene and dipped herself in what was stolen away. the criminal is clear, it didn't need to be mentioned. she was found bloodless, exsanguinated — a more technical term, not even a drop on the asphalt in an unnamed alley except her hair that was sticky with it. the tv clicks off without a sound. eliott rises, slightly nauseous, probably because he got up too fast. probably. 

  
  
  
  
  


"remember to close up properly when you're done."

it's an old film store that sits near the border of paris, meeting small empty fields and neat houses, near the suburbia, away from the grime, though near enough to touch the very edges of it. eliott tripped over his thanks, staggering over the words until he's given a slight shake of the head and an uncomfortable pat on the shoulder. no one comes in, dust over the unopened cases. the store's operational hours are daylight ones, his body took a while to adjust, old wounds closing up. 

on the bus he passes the clinic, business slow in the mid-afternoon, mostly medical personnel lingering outside with a cigarette burning between their lips. involuntarily, his eyes would go to the crook of his arm. no bandaid covers it, the only memory a crude purple surrounding it, fading faster by the day. the store doesn't pay that well, although better than the convenience store, worse than the blood bank. eliott sits by the register in that cramped store, the cramped store full of color, appealling colors, colors that remind him of various odditties in a fridge. he shakes his head of the image. 

these were the strings he severed, stitched together to never part, and part they did, severed strings torn at the seams, cut away with blunt scissors. these have been the few weeks, pills pushed down his throat, pills avoided, sketches stuffed in the trash, and then work, work to forget, work to earn money, work to forget the nights spent with lucas, and go back home to the bleak nights spent thinking about him. it's seven in the evening. he's working the night shift. no graveyard shift comes after. his clock ticks forward slowly. slower with the rustle of voices outside. even slower as the hour hand inches closer to the eight. 

and then his phone rings, and rings, and rings. 

a name lights up the screen, first-name, emoji beside it. safe as life. eliott stares hard at it amidst the horror dvds. he stares so hard it blurs the letters. the cover of _the exorcist_ looks on, bearing her gruesome spirit, eyes facing the other way. he picks up. there's breathing on the other end of the line, but it's asymmetric, unnatural, more habit than necessity. 

_"i'm at the church._ "

as soon as the words are out the line empties. there's no saints to shudder from his behavior, aside from the faces of fictional demons, angels, ghosts, watching while eliott stuffs his things into his backpack, turning off the computer that logged zero purchases in those hours, then the lights, locking the door, tugging the shutters down. forgiveness wouldn't sound like that. forgiveness from what? eliott huffs. his heart leaps too eagerly, as if not knowing the fall would be from a high-rise too far from the ground. it stands on the edge, precariously, all the way down the streets and the bus ride and the streets again, all the way into the back of the church. 

there are considerably more bodies in the pews. probably because it's only nine pm, and eliott spots him easily, sitting in the back, holy ground burning his feet, faced the other way. he watches him reach against his throat, searing fingers on the silver crucifix, soothing them by pressing them into his knees. it looked painful, lucas like he's versed in hiding it. not even a shift in the muscles of his face. nothing. eliott doesn't breathe when he sits next to lucas, finding him watching. liking him is often a physical pain, a knife to the lungs, stinging and stinging until it's pulled out, collapsing both breath and word. he searches his face to see it's empty — only blankness, mouth apart for eliott to see what he doesn't say, his name, _eliott_. 

"eliott," and it sounds like a prayer, coming from him. surprise wasn't what eliott expected when lucas says, mutters, wonders: "you came."

"yeah." and eliott sees the rosary gripped so tight it leaves imprints on his skin, his fair, fair skin, before his eyes deviate to his face. he's so pretty. _i think god hates me_ , lucas had said, but still, he's holding onto the threads of his faith. "you called." the rosary is tossed to his side. nobody sits next to him. the small church is never filled enough to sit at the back, only the occasional sunday mass. services conducted here were usually for people who died alone, or people who died too poor. the pastor came weekly from a neighbouring church. eliott feels his mouth dry. he presses his hand against the pew, meeting the edges of lucas' hand, just the edges, just, just, just. he's missed him, eliott realizes. he wants to say it. "i—" _i miss you_ , _i want you_ , he thinks, and yet there was a gap between wanting to and being able to pronounce those sounds. lucas' pinky is touching his. so eliott settles for: "why did you call?" _why didn't you call?_

"i think i missed you," lucas' voice is tentative as if trying to understand what it means. "i think— i don't know. i saw the postcard on the wall from the other day. i wanted to see you."

_the other day was_ several weeks ago, now a dusty memory arrayed at his feet. this is a confession returned back to him. eliott isn't sure if he wants it. his heart finally falls. there's a lump down his throat as he swallows. he wants to smile, he almost does. "i missed you." people are starting to file out, leaving the syllables to echo. "i wanted to call, i just—" _didn't know the limits to this relationship_. the sentence remains broken. is it a relationship if they haven't named it? it is, probably. definitely. 

lucas sighs. he looks sick, and there's blood under his fingernails when lucas tries to flatten his hair, pushing on strands as it'd allay the messiness. then— there's a weight on his shoulder. soft brown strokes graze his jaw, eliott stiffens for a second, but lets him anyway. he'd let him do anything, everything. kiss him, kill him, maybe it's all the same. this time it's a kiss, a kiss like a bullet, leaving an exit wound in its wake in the form of his taste, and he tastes like the blood after biting on lips too hard. lucas' hands find the ridges of his spine over his shirt. they dig into them until it almost hurts. eliott almost flinches, he almost does. lucas seems to notices, because he pulls away at once, face engulfed by the shapes the arches of the church make. 

"sorry," he mumbles, hastily. colors are the only thing eliott can vaguely make out. slash of red for lips, pale irises, raven pupils pinpricks. "sorry." the apology is two-ways, which he comes to realize when lucas gets up, hands shaky, borrowed rosary forgotten. "i need to go." and then he does. a sense of dread makes its way into his stomach, making him feel ill the more he sits alone amid the icons and the incense. 

it's a bit after ten pm. there's still a few people lingering about the place. eliott leaves through the doors in the back, taking the long way home since it's still early out, walking instead. he showers, eats, sketches the traces of what brown hair looks as it falls, and then there's his medication. eliott swallows it dry. it's a bit after twelve. the nasty feeling hasn't dissipated. he sleeps through the feeling, anyway, for a few hours.

then there's a knock, eliott blinks awake, another knock, he stumbles out of bed, sheets clinging onto his legs like a lost lover. bony knuckles rap against wood. in the oppressive dark he navigates around the furniture in his bedroom, which is also the living room, the kitchen. they come in hesitant beats. while he was asleep the heater shut off, drowning the room with an airless frost. 

"i did something bad," a voice mumbles once the door opens, hoarse and fragile. 

nothing. 

"what?"

his shoes leave dirty footprints as he pushes past him. "i did something bad, i did—"

"what did you do, lucas?" eliott asks, and it's that feeling again, like a sickness, breathing in poison while he watches him. every syllable is cracked from slumber. he thinks he knows what lucas did. blood under fingernails, the prayers burning the roof of his mouth said once, twice, thrice, a thousand times, asking for forgiveness. and then there's the phrase one says before a confession, said through lattice, through heavy curtains, _forgive me, father, for i have sinned_ —

"the girl."

through the weeks, eliott has been reading about the deaths of innocent girls. they make the headlines every few days, these girls, and their descriptions are thorough, their hair, what they wore, what they didn't wear, the shade of their lipstick, how they died, neatly or messily. sometimes the pictures of them, ones they took before they knew it would be their last day on earth, would be pasted beside the paragraphs detailing their short lives. and their faces, crooked teeth, perfect teeth, short hair or long hair, would follow eliott in his dreams. nightmares. they're called that, too.

"— what girl?" and the air comes out stiff. still, he knows, of course. but there was a difference between knowing in his head and having the words hang, tangibly. lucas inhales like somebody's strangling him. 

"the girl in my garden." 

the words posed side by side are hued with some sort of strange innocence. they sound too plain, even to his ears. _the girl in his garden, dead or alive._ the ground beneath his feet lurches the slightest. eliott feels sickly. the next words he stumbles on with mild horror. he wants to go back to bed and sleep it all away, until dream and reality are blended until there are no seams left. when eliott swallows, it's sourness in his throat. everything is delicate as porcelain. he could tell him to leave, he could. it doesn't mean he wants to, though. "why did you tell me?"

"i didn't know what else to do."

"then what do you want me to do?" eliott tries again. nobody bothered to turn on the lights, eyes going briefly to the clock beside lucas' head. it is either very late or very early. eliott rubs a hand down his face, a headache forming between his temples, spreading rapidly. he wants to laugh, but all that comes out instead is a choked cough. eliott is scared — the realization comes after a minute. however it's difficult to tell whether it's lucas he's scared of or the recoil the dead girl sleeping in the dirt of his garden would make after lucas pulled the trigger. 

he sees lucas curl in on himself, how jittery, how shaky, how high on the act of manslaughter he is, or murder, perhaps. "you could call the police," and lucas pauses for a moment. "turn me in." the police don't deal with vampires well. often they're left to rot in cells, rotting more than they do now, forever faint and flashing, an irrational number. "i didn't— i didn't mean to. i might get a reduced sentence— i didn't want to drink—"

"no," is the automatic response. he feels no relief, lucas doesn't seem like he does, either. "i won't." _i can't_. 

lucas says nothing. he looks down to study his own hands, seemingly detached from what they could do, few but long cuts laced on the back of them, no blood, just scar tissue that's already knitting back together. they look like the kind of cuts made by long nails. eliott glances towards the wall. "i'm sorry," lucas mumbles. the floorboards creak as he walks forward, trying to reach for his face, but eliott shakes him off, stepping back. "eliott—"

"just—" he squeezes his eyes shut. it's easier to deny him this way, eliott thinks briefly, when he can't see the hurt shading his expression. "give me a minute."

"okay," lucas replies quietly.

fingers that come up to tug on his sleeve softly chill him down to the bone, revelling in it and the divergence it makes to the numbness. when eliott opens his eyes, lucas is staring into them, dark browns untamed, pale blues caught in a web of redness. milky skin, sprinkled only by a light constellation of beauty marks. he looks as if he's been crying blood. with the other hand eliott tugs on the strands of his hair, the act stinging his scalp like bleach. "you've never done this before."

"no. _no_." 

eliott crouches against the nearest wall, hands on his neck. distant screams reverb nearby and then silence. no one moves. he breathes out again when he hears muffled conversation after a minute or two. this time — it's relief. he wants to protect them, the girls, eliott vows. their short, fleeting lives cut even shorter by brutal ends. _easy targets_ , a reporter apprises solemnly, _they remain blameless, always_. but nevertheless they're still blamed. out too late, too little pieces of clothing, lips painted too bright. lucas crouches with him. eliott looks up from the floor, then. "if you ask me to go, i'll go," he tells him, slowly.

it's cruel, too cruel. "you know i won't."

"i don't want to hurt you," lucas admits when the silence drags on for seconds too long, too raw. eliott feels around for a box of cigarettes and a lighter, needing a distraction. he finds one hidden under some rain-damp clothes. around them, the cheerless scent is already permeating. lucas looks on blankly, as eliott lights it up. it burns poorly in the dark. 

and it's then, only then, after taking a long drag does eliott put the sentence together, "you already have." pronoun, adverb, verb. the past-tense is incorrect, though. it's present, very much so, even now, when eliott loves him — it's love, isn't it? — with a love made of glass lucas can't swallow. 

glass could cut, could hurt. it could go both ways, bearing the pain of the one of whom is cutting and the one being cut. often times it is accidental. holding it with too tight a grip often leads to wounds that bleed on your end, even if you held on to the smooth side of it. _like love_ , eliott thinks bitterly. eliott makes a heart into glass. when lucas holds onto it, the edges smooth. the shards turn in on themselves. turns into something breakable. something to break. 

"— i'm stepping out." eliott forces himself up, cigarette dangling loosely from his fingers. like rain, the smell of cigarette smoke is already starting to stick. he doesn't like it clinging to everything in that room. it makes the apartment more unpleasant than it already is. a drink instead would be nice — eliott has a few bottles in the fridge, but it doesn't mix well with his medication and the demons laying dormant inside his head, waiting. 

so eliott heads up. the door shuts, lucas doesn't follow him. he skips every second step on the way to the rooftop. _twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four_ — the door opens, stale air to breathe in, paris glimmering during twilight hours, a stark juxtaposition to his hands that shake when he flicks the cigarette off the ledge. his heart hurts, and so does his head. eliott leans against the ledge. there's a dead girl in lucas' garden. together, the syllables are pretty, spoken like a shakespearean tragedy in unassuming consonants. it's dark, dark imagery. but he likes lucas in a strange, certain way, in a way that's bound to last, in a way that serves no purpose. he likes lucas, the reckless everything about him, the curve on his lips in the rare smiles he gives, and he likes whatever interesting thing lucas thinks eliott has in him. humanity, some say it's called. both the biological parts and the non-biological parts that make him function. 

when eliott returns, lucas is still there. he looks as if he's asleep, curled upright against the edge of his mattress, but on the floor beside it. fondness rises in his chest, unbidden. "show me," eliott mutters, touching him on the wrist softly, barely any contact. lucas blinks in confusion at the touch or at the words. " _the girl_ ," he carries on after a small pause. lucas' mouth flattens, as though the reminder was too upsetting to know again. lucas leans into him, probably breathing in the remnants of cigarette and cheap shampoo, clingy, allowing eliott to cling back. 

"you're not afraid of me."

"i am," eliott says against his hair. he is so afraid there isn't any other emotion to feel (only love, maybe). "just not enough, i suppose."

it is the last time they touch before lucas shows him the way to his house. a long walk away, slicing through foreign streets eliott doesn't recognise the names of, different from the way it was from the gallery. the darkened nothingness is filled with the sounds of cars on the motorway not too far, canvas shoes on filthy asphalt, stoplights casting watery fluorescents. the gate is opened when they enter. lucas opens the front door, nothing changed; eliott expected something to betray that a crime was committed. furniture remains undisturbed. dust still lays in thick seasons over surfaces. then lucas disappears inside the kitchen, door creaking as it gets pushed open. eliott follows the noise. 

wet soil sticks to the bottoms of their shoes, lucas doesn't get closer but points to the flowerbed amidst the overgrown greenery. every plant chokes one another, difficult to step through, though there was a paradoxical order to it. "she's there." present tense seems odd to use. eliott nods, bracing himself for a macabre scene as he gets closer. and it is but it isn't. 

_she's there_. she is, present tense, in the middle of a trampled flower bed full of crushed red geraniums, weeds growing somewhere between the spaces her mangled limbs don't take up. it stifles the air in his lungs. she's so still it's like she never lived, her eyes closed by apologetic fingers. her hair falls long and black like a waterfall, skin pale, but maybe that's just the blood taken away by a life for a life to stain the flowers beneath her. 

she's— beautiful. 

it is simple acknowledgement. her clothes were straightened, a floral dress adorning her body, shoes lined against the dirt. everything looks utterly undisturbed if not for the flesh eliott finds under her fingernails. traces of blood around the cuticles. past tense. eliott feels nauseous. there is something alive about her deadness, something freshly stolen. eliott doesn't even know her name. lucas probably doesn't either. 

eliott mumbles a prayer to a god he doesn't know is listening, then moves her hair away from her neck, carefully. lucas is watching him. he kneels, feeling how damp the earth seeping into his jeans is, how the air smells of rain, how it blends with the sickness in his stomach. eliott hears the door shut. he turns, briefly, to see that lucas has gone before his eyes go back on the girl. there's two puncture wounds, small holes, resembling too closely to bullet holes. resembling sharp teeth made to hurt. her hair is moved back into place. they need to clean her up, bury her. _they_ , collective noun, present tense. 

the world shifts as he stands on shaky legs. eliott's hands don't smell of death. but when he goes back in he washes his hands by the sink until they smell of cleaning products, until his skin is wrinkled, scrubbed until they hurt. "what was her name?" eliott asks, weakly. there's a pause in which eliott guesses he's swallowing. although too raw, lucas lets him know. on the table lays a wallet and a mobile phone facing upwards. the water drips from the tips of his fingers to the floor. "why did you do it?"

silence, so heavy it hurt. 

"i didn't mean to." it's all consuming. "i'm a monster, eliott," and for a moment lucas looks scared, voice small, the admission giving blunt ends to it. the girl's phone, a sleek black thing, vibrates in the middle of the table. missed calls, messages lit up to be read. _where are you?_ (where are you? where are you?) eliott doesn't want to look any more. "i wanted," a sniff. "i wanted to to see how long i could go without." 

"she's dead—"

"but i hurt her anyway," lucas completes. he walks to the kitchen table to turn the phone over, leaving fingerprints on the glass, vibrations dissipating into silence at once. there's nothing more eliott can say. the dampness of his jeans makes him feel colder and he shivers, reaching out to hold her wallet. it's black, too, like the phone. credit cards, a few bills, an id card, the face staring back at him glaringly alive. she was twenty, only twenty, now reduced only to a face that'll be on the news. only, _only_. "i want to bury her," the words are muttered as lucas looks at him. 

"okay," nods eliott after some long moments. "we'll do that."

so they do. they work in silence, eliott crushes the phone under his shoe until it splinters, lucas goes outside with a damp cloth, kneeling on the dirt beside the girl, eliott watches through the window in the kitchen. the proximity between the faint remains of blood on her neck make lucas' movements stiff. nevertheless there's care in his fingers as he brushes her hair away, wiping the blood off her, dark hair placed back into position. lucas doesn't cry. (somewhere in the trash there are bloodstained tissues next to the stains on his sleeves). _i have a shovel_ _in storage_ , lucas mumbles once he comes back inside, disappearing again to reappear with an old shovel. eliott just nods. words, if eliott were to say them now, feel too much like needles, all sharp beginnings and endings. 

a tree sways gingerly in lucas' backyard in the hostile cold of the a.m., arched towards the sky, leaves small but many and whispering. under it, however, is empty space. lucas starts digging. the shovel hits the dirt with a muffled _thump_ . plants flinch, roots tangled stubbornly underground with one another. _thump_ . eliott goes back in to retrieve the broken phone and wallet. he's kept the few notes inside. _thump_. lucas looked like a ghost in the dark, fair enough to pass for translucent, or rather, perhaps for the dead. the lack of sleep trips eliott up as he weaves closer to him like the greenery is doing, eventually reaching the boy and his shovel and his sharp, sharp teeth. 

"let me." _thump_. eliott offers a hand for the shovel. lucas looks at him for a bit before shrugging. it's a cold, heavy weight pressed into his hold, and the dirt is dense when he digs. it keeps the fatigue at bay, in one way or another. 

in the corner of his vision he sees lucas go back inside, the creaking of the steps, a bulb being turned on, then off, the creaking of the steps, an opening of the door. a yellowed sheet is bunched up in his arms to be laid beside the flower bed. it's a stark sort of shade in this color palette, not at all belonging. dirt rains from the girl's dress as she is lifted up as if falling from the flowers blooming on her dress. 

a shallow, shapeless ditch lies beneath the tree, dirt heaped to the side. it's maybe hours later. eliott tosses the shovel away, sweat beading on his neck, making his clothes stick too intimately to his skin. "help me?" lucas doesn't need help. what the tissue and sinew and muscles making up his body can do — it's there, laid out in front of him.

"alright." confession. the dirty ground hurts his knees. 

with delicate motions they cover her face with a cloth, the half-closed eyes, whites milky, wrapping up her body. she's lowered into the crudely made hole. eliott holds a handful of dirt, and it falls slowly atop the sheet, caught between gravity and grasp. "i've never been to a funeral before," lucas points out, almost quiet enough. she feels revered in a sickly sort of way. a wolf mourning for the bones left by a lamb it loved too hard with a scary sort of love. 

"you can count this as your first, then." eliott watches him copy his motions, sprinkling dirt into the hole. there's a shovel between them. 

after a moment lucas steps back to ask, "what about you?"

"this isn't a funeral."

"it is for me. you said so."

"not for me." it's a burial. perhaps they're synonymous, meaning the same. "not like this," he stops, then, because it's too unclean to say. lucas simply shrugs.

together they make to bury her properly, passing the shovel back and forth, some distance between their bodies. she's buried with her phone and her wallet and her pretty shoes with one broken heel. the machinations of this are blurry. thinking of her as an _it_ is easier to bear, though, so he does. come summer, the ground will erode to reveal a perfect rag doll skeleton, her dead phone, dirty wallet and broken high heel sitting along with it. come summer, there might be cuffs around his wrist by then, physically or figuratively — maybe both. 

"are we done?"

"yeah," lucas stares at the uneven ground, at the flowers that have been disturbed, at the hands that did the disturbing. "i'm tired," he mumbles. which, in non-human terms, means _i want to leave_. 

so they go back inside to rid themselves of the traces of the girl on their skin. when eliott reaches for the soap behind lucas, his nostrils fill with hospital hallways, soulless bodies and their hollowed spirits drifting about corridors and chambers, dead or alive. he smells too clean, sterile, metallic. but while that will fade, the vile stench of guilt will never fade, which even sweet perfume can't hide. it hurts his insides to breathe. acid is eating up his lungs and vital organs. by the end there will be nothing else. nothing for eliott to love with, or nothing for eliott to be loved with. lucas' shirt was forgotten in the dusty bathtub. eliott realizes they smell the same. 

vehicles are already going by in dull symphonies, a sign that he's been here for far too long. "it's morning," eliott points out, sighing. he didn't intend to stay. he never does. it happens— like when they made love once, twice, because he likes him, because he'd like to stay close, closer to him, closer than that, closer than whatever they are now. _because_ , it's a knowledge that grows inside his head. _because you're in love with him_. gray light seeps in between the drawn blinds, lucas should be wearing a shirt. the drain gurgles when lucas shuts off the tap. 

"i need to sleep," he says to eliott's reflection. something changed under his skin. it's visible in the sharp geometries his limbs make as he tugs his shirt back on. 

"okay."

a nod. " _okay_."

gingerly, lucas steps out of the bathroom tiled with patterns from the sixties, a tacky blue, tasteless against the plain walls outside, barefoot. he looks — exposed. vulnerable, maybe. eliott doesn't know how to feel. when eliott doesn't follow, he looks behind his shoulder, blandness in his eyes. "you coming?" eliott blinks. lucas is utterly still. 

"i don't know," and it's all truth. 

the beep of a truck jolts the strange silence. "alright." eliott didn't expect him to ask him to stay, or ask him to leave. it goes both ways, that's what these things often are. lucas sniffs, turning away, hearing the footsteps that dim as the seconds go by. eliott releases the air inside his lungs. he waits by the sink for a second, two, three— eliott knows the way to his bedroom too well. the door is ajar, almost expectant. lucas is sat on the cot, as if waiting. "you can sleep here," he mumbles, standing. it's been made, sheets only slightly wrinkled, still stiff from washing, but the room is so deeply embedded with lucas eliott can't smell the laundry detergent. then, after a second, lucas adds hastily: "i changed the sheets."

"ah," eliott nods, struggling for words. 

a pair of gray sweats sit awkwardly in lucas' hands. he approaches him in timid steps, eliott wants to get back. it's too much — too much all at once, this hot and cold, like whiplash, like a fever. "your jeans are dirty." only this feels permanent, the hurt. a fever that won't break. eliott takes it from him. they look big enough for him, and eliott doesn't want to think about his past lovers, but he does. there's a lump down his throat eliott can't swallow. 

lucas turns around for him. it's way past that, past first kisses and undressing and casual indecency, it's the wrong way around, they got it wrong, but it's the only way they know. that way it's almost right. the sweats are soft around his legs, warm. 

"you can turn around." the words feel foolish, voiced with some kind of nervousness eliott can't mask. he decides it's safe to do so. in the darkness eliott sees the way lucas' pupils dilate the slightest. eliott's mouth feels dry. one step, two, three, eliott thinks he's going to kiss him, four, lucas tosses his jeans on the bed, five, his lips are almost there, six, _six_ , lucas rests into him. 

"— you're warm." 

head on his shoulder, there's coldness on his skin from when lucas exhales, body shuddering, as if cold cold cold. he is, his skin is, it always is, almost like his body's following the patterns of someone else. someone with a name that's even-voweled, unlike his. eliott's hand hovers over his shoulder, touching lightly. he pats him on his thin shoulders, bony, full of ridges, dipping into a valley where the blades don't meet. it's almost loving. "you should sleep," he suggests, unsure. "you probably need it." eliott probably needs it, too. lucas clears his throat, stepping back. the whites of his eyes are red, from fatigue or from tears that don't spill, eliott doesn't know. 

"yeah," his knuckles are stained pink when he rubs his eyes. " _yeah_ ," lucas repeats more forcefully, almost to himself. 

"good," eliott nods. so they sleep, eliott takes the cot, lucas takes the coffin. it's done in quiet tones, in _fortepiano_ , the rustling of sheets, lying there until they're still in their own beds, lying until the silence strokes them to sleep. 

(and it's eliott that wakes first, lucas doesn't stir even when he wakes up breathing heavily. he doesn't know what color the girl in his garden's eyes are, but in his dreams they blinked open, a strange shade of cerulean, hands sweet as they went around his neck, crushing his windpipe until there was no air, no air, until he woke. he remembers being afraid but not much else. nightmares don't tend to cling, only the fear does. it's five p.m. when he checks his phone. 

he changes out of the sweats back into his dirty jeans, floorboards cold and creaking under his feet, stepping on stray patches of dirt that spilled from pots. it probably isn't healthy to sleep in a room full of plants at night. it doesn't matter anyway, eliott can't help but think. carbon dioxide is futile against the processes that aren't the human body. to bodies that don't suffer under physical means. he didn't mean to stay, he never does. maybe subconsciously eliott has always thought about it, about them being lovers — _staying_ — waking up to each other's body while others fall asleep, sleeping while everyone was awake; about god, about gore, about goodwill. it plays with the deluded fantasies in his head. they help him sleep sometimes. fantasies are cruel that way, but still, eliott lets them unfold, just to see how far they take him. 

eliott drags his body to the open coffin, eyes finding the figure laid asleep between silk lining. he touches the ends of his hair, the soft strands, sighs even softer. he looks — dead. like an open-casket funeral, dressed not in his funeral best. there's still prettiness about him, though, in the stillness of his body, features calm, youthful, shadows playing with his contours. eliott looks once more. longing eats him up like acid. ultimately, though, he steps back, walking downstairs, past the living room, the door to the backyard, past the front door and farther, past everything until he's back to the nights he's lived without him.)

("you're bad for me," eliott says softly. lucas doesn't say anything. he's the reflection eliott sees in the bathroom of his apartment, morphed into his own features, those eyes so wide, slim nose, lips pink and pouty. in the mirror they're one and the same, and when eliott looks, it's lucas that looks back.)

  
  
  
  
  


eliott's hair is all pitch now, there's dye staining the shoulders of a shirt he hasn't worn in years, maybe, and dye on the tips of his ears. it doesn't sting his scalp like bleach does. he waits twenty minutes sitting on the toilet lid, scrolling mindlessly through his phone. he gets dye on the back of his neck, he gets it everywhere. the empty box sits idly on the vanity, the girl on the box watching him with judgement, black hair like petroleum. it reminds eliott of someone else, making him sick to his stomach. crudely, he crushes the box between his hands before tossing it into the trash.

he's seen the missing persons list, the name, her name, her face, her hair and her dress and her nails, it's all there. it's been weeks. no one comes knocking on his door. no one comes looking for her. they know, probably. they — the news, the police. they probably do, no— they do, certainly. eliott's heart falls, choking the breath on his throat. there are too many dead girls to keep track of, but the evidence is clear, albeit messy, staining the tv all over. 

and then there's lucas lallemant. 

since then eliott has deleted his number in naive defiance. often, in the hours eliott doesn't spend thinking about him, he's reading his messages, hearing the familiar accent, the way nouns sound pronounced by him, those timbres in his speech, committing them to memory, all in sick loving. now eliott deletes them, thumb shaky as he does so. the light above flickers, drawing long shadows. he sighs and leans back, legs numb, getting dye everywhere. 

the timer goes off; eliott stands clothed on the threshold his shower, washing the oiliness away, watching the darkness disappear down the drain. 

  
  
  
  


there's a church eliott's been going to. he doesn't know if he believes any more than he did, but he sits at the back, watching as the reverend speaks of god, speaks of goodwill (but not of gore). it's not the hospital chapel, this is another meant for marriages and holy communions, sunday sermons and liturgies with living people who fill the pews to the very last rows. it's a chapel that breathes in daylight and sleeps at midnight, a proper one. 

eliott likes it less. sometimes he dreams it dead. 

  
  
  


there's an empty bottle of pills by the end of the month. between work and the hours he spent busying himself he forgot to go to the pharmacy. the sickness invades his mind first. he feels it crawling under his skin only days after. by now there's a new bottle. it'll take days to recover. for now, his mind is a mess, as his apartment, as the insides of his soul, and the insides of his soul are painted in every shade of red. 

  
  
  


"i haven't seen you in a while," she wears a smile on her face as she welcomes him in. eliott feels a small thing of a mirror curl up his lips. he sits across from her, moving slowly, legs heavy like lead. "how have you been?" her name is helene, psychiatrist, forty-three. eliott's been doing well lately, until he hasn't. 

eliott tells her. he tells her about someone, leaving out the details because the devil's in them, lucas is, that's what modern literature says, that's what eliott hardly believes in. they shouldn't look that pretty with bloodstains on their teeth. perhaps it's because of it that they do, but eliott finds that he doesn't mind. he shouldn't be so accepting of beauty and cruelty, how they tend to come hand in hand, holy and horror. it doesn't work like that. 

after that there's weight that dissipates from his shoulders, love a heavy burden to carry if it isn't shared, if it isn't accepted. there's no food in his cupboards. eliott walks the way to the grocery store, feeling the emptiness grow again, the girls that pass him careless, innocent, colors adorning their clothes. it's sickening and it hurts. he can't stop, though, he can't. with icy fingers, he lights another cigarette, the fourth in forty minutes, the air hazy around him.

eliott stalls outside the grocery store, smoking his camels, non-filter, the flavor sweet, killing him with sweetness in its breath. eventually he goes in. he walks up and down the aisles, stopping in front of the soup section. several cans of tomato soup are put into his basket. someone clears their throat. 

"your hair's black now," the syllables are too small and too polite. even lucas' smile is. eliott just nods after a moment passes, at a loss. "okay—"

"does it look fine?"

it's blurted out, clinging desperately to words, as if enough to erase past mistakes and misgivings, almost meek. lucas stops, then his eyes look not at his skin, or his clothes — they look deep within his chest, staring. "yes." a nod. "it looks nice," he adds, leaning close, as if wanting to touch. there's a few packets of dried pasta in his basket. 

eliott scratches his nose awkwardly, a blistering sort of pleasure spreading deep inside his chest. it isn't healthy. responses like this, however, have already been set into his algorithms, coded into the binary making up every cell inside his body, overriding ruptures in the system, embedded into the chambers of his heart, conditional. he offers a small smile, then. "i bought the one without ammonia," his voice is oddly soft. 

"that's nice."

it's true, the mirroring expression on lucas' face almost resembling fondness. eliott taps his shoes' welts against the crude flooring. a high laugh interrupts the silence, turning the air too thin all of a sudden. lucas looks uncomfortable. eliott swallows, holding onto the hems of his jacket, something bothering his throat. he smells it, the reek of convoluted emotions. 

"i—"

"— we"

"i should go," the words stumble out, lucas walking away briskly, basket swinging from his wrist. a bell emits a tinkle as the door opens then closes. he doesn't even get a chance to utter a syllable, frozen in his spot. gingerly, eliott touches his strands of pitch. they feel brittle and damaged. his soul is starting to feel like that, too. 

  
  
  
  
  


_do i have a soul?_ you don't. you don't, but you do. the shades of it melted, there's darkness inside there now, a void, a wasteland of broken phosphenes. a soulless being. there are things under your skin. your eyes are getting black. but you touch the sun just to feel its warmth. with every shadow there is light that preceded it, light that can be found, fallen in the fissures of a damaged thing. like briny waves breaking on rocks, it comes and it goes. isn't that enough. i would hate to miss it either way. 

  
  
  
  
  


the film store shuts down. he's waved away with a month's worth of pay and an apologetic smile. eliott's back at the blood bank. the corridors greet him with silence, and hydrogen peroxide. on the front page of a newspaper laid on its side by the front desk there are headlines, another missing girl, along with the dozens that have yet to be discovered. it's not bodies they're looking to find, but bones. their scattered souls, white from pain, devoid of blood, devoid to the point there aren't even stains left, _devoid devoid devoid_. eliott inhales, slowly. it smells of ink. black, sticky ink, covering sour bleach, broken sentences smearing onto fingertips. 

nostalgia creeps up on him, the feeling uncanny when it's a place like this. he waits by the telephone, watching as it rings, hearing the dial tone when no one picks it up. there are people that stall. most have patches on the crook of their arm. someone calls his name, eliott walks down the corridor, removes his jacket, rolls his sleeve up. the needle stings as it goes in, but eliott welcomes the pain — the familiarity, probably. he's given a slice of cake and juice after they're done; it's consumed too fast outside the clinic. time on his phone reads one a.m., the sky is the darkest shade of black. he's back to those sleepless nights again. 

crouching, eliott sits with his back to the brick wall. winter seeps into the gaps of his clothing, shivering the slightest, pulling out his lighter but not his cigarettes. he's bored, mostly restless. cars go by, striping other buildings surrounding him with headlights. there's a moon out, hidden by clouds, stars concealed by them, too. threads of white come out when he sighs. 

"you're everywhere," comes a voice from the darkness, exasperate, almost. eliott lifts his eyes from the lighter to it, seeing nothing. "it's fate, maybe." in cautious steps lucas emerges, sucking on a barcoded blood bag like it's chocolate milk, redness diminishing with every swallow. "i don't believe in that, though," he adds, softer now, wary. eliott stares at his mouth, with the straw bleeding from it. it's so red. his mouth feels dry. words get lost in his throat. 

"why not?" eliott finally manages, after a moment of silence. lucas looks at him with what seems to be surprise, and his hold on the blood bag slackens. the heat of the flame burns him like the heat feeding on his insides. "— just curious."

no reply comes. lucas sits beside him instead, tossing the empty blood bag into the trash, shifting the bag on his shoulder. it sinks into the nothingness of the bin. eliott watches him do so only for a moment, then looks away. he feels a presence beside him, no matter how blunt lucas' movements seem to be. his heart beats awfully quick. lucas can probably hear it, too loud to hide, rattling his chest. there's an audible swallow, then, which forces eliott to look his way, their glance only a second long, as lucas rests his head on eliott's shoulder, lightly. "coincidences are more likely."

his shoulder barely feels the weight. eliott hums, but not agreeing. lucas doesn't carry on, fingers moving to play with the edges of his jacket, his hoodie, his jeans. eliott dosen't want to ruin this, so he doesn't ask the questions rolling around his mouth, wanting out. instead he stares at the unruliness of lucas' hair, how messy it is, how it's grown longer. he feels— affection. it's affection, the kind that goes beyond attraction, wading into the valleys of love. it is love. love, then — he feels love. love, in that sickly, all-consuming way. 

"i'm not asking for your forgiveness," lucas mumbles, words hazy with caution, pressed into the rough fabric of his jacket. pairs of shoes click bluntly against the asphalt before fading. they bring cigarette smoke with them, and sweet, sweet gum. it isn't enough to clear the copper filling up eliott's nostrils, though, the scent hyperbolic. "i'm sorry."

"i know." _to both_. eliott feels him exhale, chest heaving up and down in arrhythmic patterns. he shifts, so their sides touch. "there's the diner down the street," he finds himself offering, then. a soft kind of warmth runs down his neck. 

lucas sits up, the movement making his bag fall quietly to the ground. rubbish rustles as wind blows gingerly around them. there's no answer. he pushes off the ground, up, plastic packets crinkling, so eliott has to stand, too. "we can go."

a nod. eliott's eyes avert from the red pupils following them, pulling lucas closer. it's nice, he thinks, how solid lucas feels, rounding their way until they're sat in a random booth in the corner of the diner. pancakes are ordered, just a plate ( _shared_ , lucas mumbles to the waiter too fast), and a coffee. where eliott's fingers fall is where they meet the stuffing spilling out from torned seams. his coffee comes steaming; eliott pushes the mug over until it rests just before his palms. "here," and lucas' hands curl around the edges, eliott's nearly curls around his. "you can try if you want. even though you probably know how it tastes." he nods, brings the rim to his bottom lip before drinking, and eliott's eyes drop to his neck. it's the smallest sip. his throat works. both of them do.

"it tastes like ash," lucas pushes the mug away, grimacing. "everything does." 

"do you miss it?"

it's a question that's been asked before. still, lucas blinks, scattered, surprised. "i miss everything." his finger traces the curve of the handle, ending on the table. "i just—" lucas huffs, flustered. "nothing, forget it." eliott nods, taking the mug to drink, burning his tongue on it. it's a welcome distraction, from the syllables seemingly hovered in front of him. 

pancakes are brought out. eliott eats quickly, offering some to lucas, even though it'd taste like ash, syrup dripping from it, but lucas shakes his head, smiling weakly, watching him take one more bite, then another, and another, until there's nothing left but the glistening streaks of sweetness on the plate and silver cutlery. he pays, and they leave. 

there's an expectation that they will go their separate ways once they step out into the refurbished air, but they don't. lucas follows him around, around the park that snakes around the slumbering city, away from the people and the cars and the watchful eyes. "i missed you," lucas finally admits, cheeks the slightest shade of red. it might be from the cold, he doesn't know. they sit on a park bench that creaks under their shared weight. eliott watches him for a moment. he feels weirdly flustered. 

"ah," the word is breathed out. it dissipates as soons as it hits the light breeze around them, digging his nails into the rotting wood. lucas' fingers disappear in and out of the holes of his ripped jeans as if nervous, restless. his own stop once the wood starts to pain him. a confession starts in the lungs, and eliott can feel it there, like a cough. like something obtrusive you can't cure any other way than out. there's only silence and the bleak consignment of misery looming. "i want to be with you."

it's a confession at an inappropriate time. eliott hasn't forgotten about the girl — paris hasn't, either. he can think of the configurations, the several hundred, no — thousand permutations of the scenarios that don't end well. in all of them, pain is inflicted on them both. both either by their own selves, or by others. they usually end with silver cuffs and a police car that smells of fast food. a court room, a cell, an inkling of grayness that spreads to every other part of his short life. 

but lucas turns his head, surprise all over his face. he hears the blood bags jostle, discomfort too blatant. eliott wants to take the words back, swallow them down like cheap alcohol, pretend the girl in his garden is still breathing. it doesn't work like that, though. he swallows hard, turning his own head away to the sparse lights coming from windows of odd buildings. 

"i hurt people."

at that, eliott looks back at him, light eyes pretty. he looks— lost. lost, torn, scared, lonely, so lonely. he's boy lucas now. boy lucas, somewhere between eighteen and twenty, with too much pain in his gaze to be that age, eliott doesn't know why he notices. he knows what it's like to be too acquainted with being afraid of himself. lucas is no different. 

"i do, too."

humanity often has a way of doing that. hurting, physically or figuratively, inflicting pain or the one having pain inflicted upon. it's a paradox, a cruel one. eliott least likes that about humanity. but it is what typifies them, too. lucas sniffs. 

"the girl—"

"i know," his voice is flimsy, scratchy. there's a flicker from a streetlamp illuminating the days away from sleep on lucas' face. a flicker of something light on his expression, like hope, perhaps, tepid, mild, faint, but a flicker nonetheless. it's a nauseating hope. then, blandly, when lucas doesn't reply, he repeats: "i know that."

his throat moves, eliott eyes go about his face, wandering. his mouth is pressed thin, brows furrowed. "you love me." it isn't an accusation, but it feels too much like one. hands pause just before they touch the back of his neck. eliott inhales sharply. "— do you?"

silence follows shortly. eliott nods, slowly. "yeah," he answers after it becomes unbearable, shrinking into his clothes. lucas shuffles closer, knees touching the slightest, reaching out to hold his elbow, the touch almost loving. almost, _almost._

"i don't want to hurt you." he doesn't look at him, but away towards the darkness of the river. it's a conversation they've had before. "i hurt," he sounds sad-struck, forlorn, the traces of his expression bleak. "i don't want to but i always do." eliott lets lucas release him, then.

"that's what being human is."

"i'm not, though—," he picks at the dirt under his nails, tugging at the hem of his coat, uncomfortable. " _human_."

sirens echo from somewhere far away. eliott hears him sigh, the bench under them complaining. "you want to be," is what eliott eventually points out, although too unvarnished. then, flatly, he adds: "you can't avoid it— hurting. you can't avoid being hurt, either, whether human or not."

"i guess so," lucas shrugs. 

there's a pause, a pause in which eliott thinks lucas will stand and leave, but he doesn't. there are other things crawling under his skin. it isn't that sort of sickness. it's another sort. "i'll keep you safe."

"you can't."

"i'll try."

with barely a shift in movement, eliott leans into him, careful not to scare away. lucas leans back. nothing else is said. he allows their hands to overlap, finger on finger, warm and cold, human and inhuman, leaning until the air between them is a hyperbolic sort of small, and lucas can't deny him any longer. their lips barely brush, but it's enough. then eliott buries his face into the crook his neck. he can feel lucas' fingers curl around his clothes, holding. 

"can i come home with you?" lucas asks suddenly with some shyness, making eliott sit up. it's the kind of sentence that harms his heart in a painful way. he nods, taking his hand. he likes to imagine that they're doing this on different terms, not like this. not in the way they avoid the cctv cameras, not in the way they wind through shady alleys, not in the way the dead girls loom over them like ghosts that haunt, not in the way their seconds feel numbered. as if someone's counting. maybe god is. 

the coat he wore is left draped on the chair. lucas takes off his shoes by the door — he sits on eliott's bed like he belongs, which he does. he's been etched so deeply into the contours of eliott's mind he belongs in every room of his mind, even in the physical places, too. "we don't have to do anything," but lucas' hands find his, and eliott is pulled down, down, down — down into deep waters. there's so much warmth passing through the simple touch. it nearly burns. 

he wants him, he does, but— "okay," eliott nods, the affirmative made into a crowded monosyllable. lucas nods, too. their clothes are removed, curtains drawn, lucas wears what eliott offers, eliott wears his heart on his sleeve. lucas can't properly sleep, but still, he lays tucked in eliott's chest, the bed lacking space, space eliott is grateful for. "goodnight." it's said into lucas' hair. eliott has learned that the smell of his shampoo is one that lingers, with a voice that also stains sheets and clothes. 

they rustle when lucas shifts. he raises his eyes, meeting eliott's. "good morning," lucas smiles. 

eliott's sleep doesn't go untroubled. sun rises, lucas is still awake, demons follow, even when there's light. nothing disappears. things stay, cling, suffocate. life is often like that. 

  
  
  
  
  


"i don't want you to leave me," there's strain when lucas speaks, several weeks later, several other meanings hidden in the layers of his voice. it's meaningless to say. things die, and live, and die again. but eliott nods, patting him on the hand lovingly. the space he takes up seems small. he moves into eliott's apartment, unofficially, leaving things everywhere, his clothes, his shoes, his blood, his teeth. they go next to the wine. beside some fruit — milk, too. 

"don't let me leave you, then." 

  
  
  
  
  


sometimes, lucas goes back to sleep in his coffin. it's a place lucas has grown to dislike, eliott realizes. there are too many old memories there, a history that has left him behind, an absent god that leaves only ghosts inside. they get a taxi at midnight to move it and some plants. portraits were left up. the plastic stars were taken down — he puts them in his pocket, and they glow faintly, showing through fabric. 

  
  
  
  
  


one night, eliott finds his lighter gone. his cigarettes are still there inside his pocket, though.

  
  
  
  
  


( _a fire has recently consumed a suburban house,_ the reporter is saying, he's on the six a.m. news, red and blue lights shading sleepy faces surrounding burnt remains, people awake still in their pyjamas. _authorities suspect that arson was behind it, though no one was harmed. the motivations are unclear_ — _whether this was childish amusement or a targeted crime, police are hoping to find out_.)

  
  
  
  


lucas carries smoke when he comes home. eliott stayed up, hoping to be awake for him to come home, but he fell asleep on the sofa anyway, for a few short hours, body twisted in an awkward position, neck throbbing when he wakes. he just missed him. it's smoke that invades. smoke that's unlike cigarettes — still dirty, but of different sorts, sticking to the furniture they share, and there's gasoline on the edges of his jeans, on his hands, on the smoke that clings. eliott stares, lucas stares back. it lasts for a few seconds before eliott inhales, head hurting. lucas sits beside him. the tv flickers, static covering parts of the screen. it consumes every other noise in their small home. lucas rests his head on his shoulder. the commercial that's playing is for some new hair dye. eliott almost feels the letters of an apology pressed into his skin. 

  
  
  
  
  


eliott finds work elsewhere. the question comes after his night shift, adjusted to that of lucas', cicardian rhythm matched to the nighttime strobe. "— _forever_?" it's only a word, that word, the word, three syllables, full of sharpness and softness in those consonants. it's the end of a question, the beginning of something else.

eliott eats a burger on a bench in the graveyard by the clinic while lucas sucks on a new blood bag ( _type-o_ ) beside him. it's maybe weeks later. spring is tepid, warm, but lucas is always cool, so eliott often finds himself touching his skin whenever he can, inadvertently or not. weeds grow from the cracks between them. eliott is bound to look his way, lucas' pupils dilate. 

"what?" eliott chuckles. 

"you told me not to let you leave me," and then he pauses, looking immediately unsure. "forget it, it's selfish—"

"okay." decisions such as this shouldn't be made so thoughtlessly, rashly, recklessly, but the word stumbles out before eliott can swallow his next bite. he's considered it before; it started as a thought in the back of his head, as most thoughts do. forever. 

it's strange— loving. how it makes you do strange things, how short a life feels, then, as if days, months, years all of a sudden grow shorter still. eliott's heart stammers. he turns his head back to the burger, hearing the way lucas goes back to drinking from the blood bag. redness crawls up his skin.

"lucas," eliott calls, holds out a palm. it's light out, a clear night, moonlight illuminating the old graves around them, names carved in cursive and covered in grime. lucas looks like he belongs, he realizes. a child to the dead and the living alike. eliott wonders if he would, too. lucas hums, taking his hand. the other puts the burger aside. "i'll—" he stops. "i can live with that. forever." endings— those he learned was always permanent. he doesn't know what it means, not really. he isn't sure there would be much to live for if death and his scythe didn't hover.

lucas observes his contours that have been shaded green from the _open_ sign on the blood bank entrance. he smiles— and then, and then, he sees the blood stains on his teeth. something inhuman in the gaps. eliott smiles too. "— okay, then."

  
  
  
  
  


death, as it awaits on the other side, almost feels like untroubled sleep. it isn't a painless thing, but death tends to take last feelings away before they get to be remembered. it's a borrowed casket, he isn't cremated, not made into a headline, either. the sun rises and sets once, twice, thrice. saint mary watches over him, a statue lucas brought with him, but eliott can't see through the darkness, it's so dark, so dark. it's sunless. no moons are there, either, only silence and the void. outside, though, they continue to rise and set and rise and set, oblivious to you or your life whether short or long, numb to your wants and needs. 

the world turns. cells deteriorate. a sunset sinks red. organs collapse. the seven p.m. news continues. a heart slows until it barely beats. but something— something floods inside vessels and capillaries, moving a crude waltz through the chambers of a slow, slow heart, feeding on red-colored rot. and then, and then— 

_you wake._

  
  
  
  
  


(it goes like this: lucas shares the blood bags with him, the fruit in his fridge begins to mould, milk spoils, vegetables rot, skin turns cold. they go to the grocery store when the sun sinks, buying cans of soup.)

  
  
  
  


(it goes like this: the bones of the girl are found, there's a memorial, a vigil for her, and for all the other girls, candles lit and hymns sung. they move out when there's no light out, no light at all. they buy a lamp that spills light over their skin, artificial and fake, shaded orange and yellow, like the sun, but kinder. they find a church that smells of hairspray. there's no pastor, no priest. his ribs shake with every pointless breath expelled into polymer particles. they share the same coffin when they go back home, enclosed in the same space, like being buried in the same one-metre plot.)

  
  
  
  


(fall turns into spring, into summer, into winter. milk spoils, blood dries. they buy some more.)

  
  
  
  
  


( _impression, sunrise_ , claude monet, 1872. it hangs near the fridge, near light, near a window.)

  
  
  
  


(it goes like this: everything ends.)

  
  
  
  


(life runs out, it always does, everything does, even when time doesn't. it's many years later, 173 to be exact, when _impression, sunrise_ is yellowed at the edges, colors gone, curled with time, faded, for it was near the sun all the while. every night, it's touched by cold fingers, just to feel the remains of its warmth. but they sleep with the windows open tonight, cold bodies tangled. then the sun, that sun, their sun, rises, not the fake sort. the postcard falls onto a floor webbed by light. it's warm, so warm. and then, and then. 

and then there's just dust—)

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for the awful ending! i've never been really good at those oh well.  
> you can come find me [@unquaintly](http://unquaintly.tumblr.com) if you'd like.


End file.
